Chapter 3 preparing to catalog your collection – Follett VERSION 6.00 User Manual

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Chapter 3 Preparing to catalog your collection

The Cataloging setup tasks you'll need to perform include the following:

grouping your collection according to lending period; identifying probable call

number locations in your MARC records; setting up your call number prefixes;

increasing access to your collection with categories you define; defining the tag

range for your brief MARC records; and making it easier to add copies to your

collection.
Throughout this chapter there are references to MARC 21 (formerly known as

USMARC), MARC records, and the MARC 21 standard. If you are not familiar

with MARC, please find an appropriate reference guide before beginning, such as

the MARC Bibliographic Format Guide, published by the Follett Software Company,

or MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Data, published by the Library of Congress.

See also:

For more information about MARC, visit the Library of Congress Web

site at

http://lcweb.loc.gov/marc

Grouping your collection according to lending period

As you already know, when a patron checks out a book, the circulation period

(length of time he/she is allowed to keep the book) is based on the patron type

(age or classification of the patron) and the circulation type (type of book). For

example, libraries may only allow students to check out new books for half of the

normal checkout period. To help you maintain the various lending periods based

on the type of book, Circulation Plus/Catalog Plus allow you to create and assign

circulation types to the copies in your collection.

Example:

Let's suppose you want to limit the loan period of a new book to one

week. You would create a circulation type such as 1Ćweek checkout," or New

books," depending on how you want to group your collection, and then establish

a corresponding loan period for this circulation type for each of your patron

types in your circulation policies.

You assign a circulation type to a copy when you add a new copy to a title in

Cataloging. You can change the circulation type of a copy by editing the copy.
Circulation types are, however, only descriptions of the loan periods for items in

your collection. You establish the actual loan periods when you create your

circulation policies for your patrons.