CRL records in Summit

Materials listed in the Center for Research Libraries online catalog have been added to Summit. Included are cataloged monographs, newspapers, serials, archival materials in microform, microform sets and title analytics; CRL's cataloging for holdings that appear in OCLC and RLIN; order records for purchase proposals and "demand purchases" (member requests) for major microform sets, foreign dissertations, retrospective newspaper files, microfilm reels that represent activities of national governments; and serial check-in records for currently-received journal and newspaper titles.

Adding the CRL records to Summit

Holdings. Item-level holdings for monographs and serials are not always available or complete. Patrons interested in requesting a multi-volume monograph without holdings information for specific volumes should proceed to request the title; CRL will process the request and send available items, or will send the first volume with a note to re-request additional volumes if needed. Meanwhile, CRL staff complete item records and holdings information in their local system, which automatically sends updates to Summit.

Headings, or access fields. A number of the records are not complete cataloging records; while the author and title information and bibliographic description may be accurate, subject headings and classification numbers may be missing. Summit subject and classification searches will not necessarily yield all relevant materials held by CRL.

Limiting by material type. The Summit union catalog includes the ability to limit a search by type of material (book, sound recording, video/film, manuscript, map, and so forth). The system examines the contents of a specific field in the bibliographic record that is used consistently by all Alliance member libraries. CRL uses that field for a different purpose: to indicate reproduction type (hard copy, reprint, large print, microfiche, microfilm, braille, etc.). The same code value will have different meanings in CRL and non-CRL records. For example, code "b" in Alliance member library records is for Manuscripts; in a CRL record it means Microfiche. Code "a" in Summit is for book (monograph) material; in a CRL record it identifies a monograph, score, map or other material available on Microfilm. CRL has few holdings in formats other than books and serials, so absence of CRL records in searches limited to Videos/films, sound recordings, and the like should not be alarming. However, without translating the codes to some other value in Summit, searches limited to Books, Manuscripts and theses, Music scores, Maps and EBooks would have CRL records included erroneously in the results. For example, a patron limiting a search to "maps" will not see relevant CRL records in the search results, and other non-map materials may be unexpectedly included. To overcome the problems with erroneous search results, especially when Limiting to EBooks, most CRL materials have been re-coded (Spring, 2004) as “Books” for the default material type.

Materials not in the union catalog. About two-thirds of the CRL collection is uncataloged, and not accessible in either the CRL or Summit online catalog. Materials not cataloged by policy: foreign dissertations, college catalogs, U.S. State documents, and textbooks. Materials to be cataloged: additional newspaper holdings, archival materials in microform, and records for some South and Southeast Asian monographs in non-Roman languages. CRL provides information about the materials in these uncataloged collections through other means, and maintains separate databases for some.

Info guide for staff 

(last updated: February 22, 2005)