Rich Entlich on Investigations into Technical Services Issues

1) Prospects for enhancing discovery of Voyager records for materials in non-Roman alphabets by adding available vernacular data in key fields Until recently, it was practice in LTS to routinely strip vernacular from MARC records before loading into Voyager, except for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean language material. That policy has changed, but there are still large numbers of Voyager records for items in non-Roman alphabets that have no vernacular data. How prevalent are non-Roman alphabets other than CJK in Cornell's Voyager records? If we wanted to retrospectively enhance existing records by adding parallel MARC fields in vernacular, would WorldCat provide a good source for such data and if so, for which alphabets? Is the available vernacular in WorldCat from trustworthy cataloging sources? 2) Evaluation of the process for improving class-on-receipt and minimal level records in Voyager LTS has established procedures for periodically comparing our less than full cataloging level records against WorldCat records for potential upgrades by pulling in missing fields, especially subject headings. Historically, which records have been getting (or not getting) upgrades in WorldCat, and do they have identifiable characteristics? Does the encoding level provide a reliable indicator of which records have been upgraded? What upgrades are available and which institutions have been responsible for the upgrades? Are any changes in cataloging or batch processing procedures indicated? Rich will also discuss use of WorldCat web service APIs in support of these investigations.