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Brown University Scholarly Resources

Reoccuring Projects

 

Fastcat Brief Batch (Level C)

Level C contains over 3k physical items that are waiting to be cataloged. Most of these items are in foreign languages that none of the catalogers know well enough to confidantly catalog, and at the time of receiving there was no record in OCLC to use for copycataloging. However, as some of these have been sitting downstairs for years there is a chance that has changed. This project is performed every 3 months to check our backlog in Level C for any items who now have an acceptable quality record to copycatalog.
  • Create a Set in Alma for Physical Items located in Acq_Rock that were added over a year ago then export all fields in the list as an Excel sheet.
  • Clean up the Excel Data and Reduce to 4 columns: ISBN, Publishing Date, Publisher, and Title. Remove any erronous characters from the fields in order to have clean searches. (e.g. Pubdate: '[1990.]' should be cleaned up to be just '1990')
  • Each row should be formated into a line in a text document that looks like: @not @not @not @and @and @and @and @and @attr 1=7 "[ISBN]" @attr 1=31 "[PUBDATE]" @attr 1=4 "[TITLE]" @attr 1=1018 "[PUBLISHER]" @attr 1=1183 "eng" @attr 1=6900 "pcc" @attr 1=1031 "elc" @attr 1=7 "ebook" @attr 1=7 "electronic"
  • There should be 4 lines for each row, with the only difference in each line being @attr 1=6900 "pcc",@attr 1=6900 "lccopycat", @attr 1=6900 "nlmcopycat", @attr 1=6900 "nlc"
  • Search the OCLC database using Z39.50 with the newly created text file. And download any hits.
  • All the found records are PCC level quality and can be overlaid on the Alma records using Fuzzy matching on an import profile.
  • Remove any Technical Migration statuses, update call numbers, and send an Excel Sheet of updated records for Catalogers to pull for reshelving. The sheet should contain: Creation Date of Item, Barcode, MMSID, Title, Author, Publication Date, and Language Code.
  • Use the Alma API to pull Item Notes in batch in order to identify shelving locations. Update Item Locations.
Detailed Documentation of the Process
 

ISBN list for new non-GOBI titles

We send lists of non-YBP purchased ISBNs quarterly to GOBI to update their list of our holdings. This helps to prevent duplicate purchases of items we previously purchased from a different vendor.
  1. Create two Alma Analytics Reports, one for Electronic Inventory and one for Physical Inventory.
    1. For the Physical Inventory, use the "Physical Items" table.
    2. Selected Columns
      1. Select the "ISBN (Normalized)" column ("Physical Items"."Bibliographic Details"."ISBN (Normalized)")
      2. Select the "Creation Date" column ("Physical Items"."Physical Item Details"."Creation Date")
    3. Filters
      1. ISBN (Normalized) is not null
      2. ISBN (Normalized) does not contain $
      3. ISBN (Normalized) does not contain (
      4. Library Name contains any Collections Annex; John Carter Brown Libray; John Hay Library; Orwig Music Library; Rockefeller Library; Sciences Library
      5. 910 - Local Param 02 does not contain ybp
      6. 910 - Local Param 02 does not contain yankee book press
      7. Creation Date is greater than [insert date of last report]
    4. For the Electronic Inventory use the "E-Inventory" table
    5. Selected Columns
      1. Select the "ISBN (Normalized)" column ("E-Inventory"."Bibliographic Details"."ISBN (Normalized)")
      2. Select the "Creation Date" column ("E-Inventory"."-- Portfolio"."Creation Date")
    6. Filters
      1. ISBN (Normalized) is not null
      2. ISBN (Normalized) does not contain $
      3. ISBN (Normalized) does not contain (
      4. 910 - Local Param 02 does not contain ybp
      5. 910 - Local Param 02 does not contain yankee book press
      6. Creation Date is greater than [insert date of last report]
  2. Export Results from both reports as Data > Excel
  3. E-mail Reports to Supervisor so they can send them to GOBI
Documentation of the Process
Harvard Documentation

Hathi Trust Export

Alma Export instructions for HathiTrust, performed on a yearly basis

  1. Create Sets in Alma
    • Single-part Monographs:
      • Use a Logical Search Query to create a Physical Item Sets
        • HathiTrust Single Monographic - Musical Scores. (Once created this set should update automatically and can be reused each time you need to make a Single-part Monographic set)
          • - Item: Material Type = Music Score
          • -Item: Item Description is Empty
          • -Item: Barcode is Not Empty
          • -Holdings: Location is Not (Select all Resource Sharing Library Locations)
        • HathiTrust Single Monographics - No Music Score (Once created this set should update automatically and can be reused each time you need to make a Single-part Monographic set)
          • - Title: Resource Type = Book - Physical
          • - Item: Material Type = Book
          • - Item: Item Description is Empty
          • - Item: Barcode is Not Empty
          • - Holdings: Location is Not (Select all Resource Sharing Library Locations)
      • Click the three dots beside the Musical Score set on the Manage Sets page. Select ‘Combine sets’. Select operation ‘OR’ and combine with the No Musical Scores set. Save new set as HathiTrust Single-part Monographs Complete. This new set will need to be deleted and remade each time we send a new set to Hathi.
    • Multipart Monographs:
      • Use a Logical Search Query to create a Physical Item Set.
        • - Title: Resource Type = Book - Physical
        • -Item: Barcode is Not Empty
        • -Holdings: Location is Not (Select all Resource Sharing Library Locations)
        • Click the three dots beside this set on the Manage Sets page. Select ‘Combine sets’. Select operation ‘NOT’ and combine with the full Single part Monographs set (both books and musical scores need to be combined before combining them with this set.) Save new set as HathiTrust Multipart Monographs Complete. The completed set will need to be deleted and remade each time we send a new set to Hathi, but the pre combine set can be reused as it will automatically update.
    • Serials:
      • Use a Logical Search Query to create a Physical Items Set.
        • - Items: Has Items = Yes
        • - Item: Material Type = Issue
        • -Holdings: Location is Not (Select all Resource Sharing Library Locations)
        • This Set is set for publication and will automatically update so it never needs to be remade.
  2. Create an Alma Publishing Profile
    • Set Content Type as Bibliographic
    • Set Publish On to Bibliographic Level.
    • Publishing Profile should be set to transfer files to Brown’s FTP server. You will need SSH access to download files after the profile finishes running in order to download tar files.
    • Under Physical Item Enrichment, set repeatable field to 977 and Description subfield as b.
    • Select one the 3 Completed sets to publish. You can use this single profile to publish each set as needed, or you can create three separate sets, but we cannot automate the Multipart and Single-part sets since they require manual intervention to combine sets.
  3. Connect to SSH to access/download tar files.
    • Speak to DT to be given permissions.
    • Filezilla is the easiest way to quickly access and download files.
    • Use VPN in order to access the SSH
  4. Run Python File
    • Download Python files from Github
      • As of 07/17/23 the Singlepart Monographs python file has errors. Please change: Line 71: oclcn = re.sub("[^0-9]", "", re_d[0]).lstrip('0') To: Line 71: oclcn = rv_d
    • Ensure proper packages from the Github readme are installed
      • Use Pandas 1.5.3, later versions no longer work with this code. You can use a virtual environment in Command Line in order to temporarily use this version if you wish to avoid uninstalling any package you already have installed.
    • Open Command Prompt and navigate to the folder containing the Hathi files
      • I.e. Command Prompt opens for me on C:\Users\khutchi2>, and my folder is in C:\Users\khutchi2\Documents\HathiTrust, so I type cd Documents\HathiTrust to navigate to the folder.
    • Run Python code.
      • I have 2 folders in HathiTrust folder, 071223 (my Hathi files) and HathiPrint_Process_Records (Python files).
        • In 071223 I have the folders ‘MultipartMono’ (Raw Multipart Monographic files I downloaded from the server), XML (empty), Output (empty)
      • In Command line, run the python code for whichever set you published.
        • The code to enter is ‘python path-to-python.py path-to-raw-file-folder path-to-xml-folder path-to-output-folder’
        • In this example I published the Multipart Monographs, for me when navigated in Command line to C:\Users\khutchi2\Documents\HathiTrust this looked like:
          • python HathiPrint_Process_Records\Multipart_Monographs.py 071223\MultipartMono 071223\XML 071223\Output
  5. Send Output Spreadsheets to Systems Librarian and Hathi Dropbox.
  6. Delete tar files in the SSH and repeat this process for the other two sets.
Detailed Documentation of the Process
Alma Developer's Blog on the Process

Documentation

 
Google Drive Folders
Shared Drive: Technical Services Documentation > Projects > Metadata
Projects
Important to include:
  • Date range this project was being worked on, including dates where any edits were made before or after the project completed
  • Summary of the Project's purpose
  • People involved in the project
  • Background information about the project and any known history of the resources being added/edited/removed. Include thought process and reasoning behind said change.
  • Methodology - how the changes were made detailed enough that someone could repeat the project if needed
  • Notes - important information and dates. Meetings where a decision or change in direction was made; Counts of how many records were found/changed; Details about failed attempts; etc.
Project Template
Project Tracking

Create a Spreadsheet with a tab for each Academic Year. Depending on preference: potentially add a separate tab for work that did not require documentation (e.g. adding a local field to a record set provided by the Hay) Include Title of Project, Start and End dates, Short Description of Project, Contributors to project, link to project documentation.

Create a list of potential projects, organize by priority and keep track of pertinent details.

[insert google spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18RK7buekvLIAbbqNL8c9HffBHKtDFa7FFK_H3IjiACI]