Scope: This document combines statements of CUL policy for the handling of record sets for items that Cornell doesn’t “hold” (approved by Dean Krafft, Xin Li, and John Saylor in March 2013), as well as a recommendation from the CUL Theses & Dissertations Advisory Group in March 2015. 

 Contact: Jim LeBlanc

 Unit: Senior Management Team

 Date last updated: June 2017

 Date of next review: June 2018


In order to ensure bibliographic access to all material in its collections, the Cornell University Library (CUL) creates permanent, openly accessible, online catalog records.  These records are essential to CUL for the management of its resources, including theses and dissertations, and to library users as a means of discovering and identifying material of interest in the Cornell collection.  To better manage and promote its collections, CUL shares its catalog records with other resource discovery services on a collection-wide basis and in conformance with a standard set of practices.

Record sets for physical items that Cornell does not own, or for open-access digital titles not specifically selected for CUL and for which bibliographic metadata is freely available elsewhere, do not belong in our local database of record (FOLIO) for Cornell holdings.  Localized access to this material, if desired, is more appropriately delivered via the integration layer of our Blacklight discovery system.