I’m starting a new series of posts to document some of the nitty gritty challenges faced by catalogers who work with WorldCat. Today’s challenge involves adding content to WorldCat records.

Today, I cataloged a Continuing Resource (aka Serial) with a title change: The United Nations Today. I found a lovely CONSER record for the new title, #273856824, that I was pretty happy with, only there was some valuable information missing from the record that I wanted to add: 1. The ISBN number that was printed on the piece and 2. The URL for the United Nations web site that includes selected full-text from the print edition.

There is no ISSN printed on the piece, nor was there already an ISSN in the CONSER record. Here’s what I saw when I attempted to validate the record after adding the 020 with the ISBN:

020 invalid relationship error

WorldCat would not allow me to add a 020 to a Continuing Resource record, even though this title has an ISBN but no ISSN. I added the ISBN to the record in our local catalog because standard numbers are critical data elements for record matching. But I was prevented from doing this in WorldCat by policy.

As for the URL to the companion web site, I was not permitted to add this to the master record because it is a CONSER, Encoding Level = blank record and mine is not a CONSER library. Again, this URL is included in the copy of the WorldCat record stored in our local catalog, so patrons can get access to online full-text through our catalog, but not through WorldCat.

My preference would be to add this information to the WorldCat master record, where it would be available to a much broader audience. But, current WorldCat policies prevented this.

Finally! OCLC truly makes a move toward “moving cataloging to the network level.” Now if only they could introduce some substantial improvements to Connexion Client and/or other cataloging software/interfaces that would help to simplify and streamline cataloging work. But, I guess one (slow) step at a time is all one can expect from an elephant.