Cataloguing

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Cataloguing in Heritage

Despite having one of the most sophisticated cataloguing environments available, the Heritage Library Management System is still incredibly easy to use. To ensure the catalogue form is as clear and user-friendly as possible, it is possible for library staff to remove and/or rename the standard fields if desired.

The Heritage Catalogue record is really flexible and can be used for the cataloguing of any number of different media types, including (but not limited to) books, grey literature, videos, CD-ROMs, images, electronic documents and websites. Other systems also offer this functionality, we know, but our flexible notes field allows you to record detailed information about an item, including perhaps the full text of information documents (all of which would be indexed) as well as more straightforward notes such as descriptions of the item or abstracts.

‘External’ resources such as pictures, images, documents and website addresses can also be catalogued and then made available to library users via Heritage Online or the OPAC (Online Public Access Catalogue) which will automatically use the appropriate viewing mechanism to display the item, e.g. a web address through a browser or a spreadsheet through Excel. Our URL checker can then report back on broken links to ensure that your catalogue is kept up to date.

The image below shows the first page of the catalogue record for monographs. A separate cataloguing environment is provided for Serials.

A large number of fields are provided, allowing for very comprehensive cataloguing of a wide variety of material, although only a few are mandatory. The catalogue is divided into several pages (see the tabs in the image above) which simplify the cataloguing task by grouping together similar fields. Users can search the catalogue via the OPAC, either across all fields or by those they have selected. This means that information need only be entered once in the catalogue record without any danger of users not knowing where to search.

The last page of the catalogue record (Additional) contains a variety of spare fields which users can define for their own purposes.

An optional MARC21 module is available for those that require to work in MARC.

If you are adding a lot of new books (or cataloguing for the first time) then QuickCat Online is likely to save you a lot of time and effort. If you have a system already then we can also convert your existing catalogue.

Examples

Below are some examples of the fields and facilities available:

Authority Files

Authority files and drop-down lists are available for many of the fields.

Related records

Catalogue records can be related to one another to provide ‘see also’ cross-references throughout the catalogue (see the OPAC for details of how this is presented to users). Multi-part items such as multi-volume works or multiple video programmes on a single video cassette are also catered for. .

Related documents

Heritage can attach urls or documents of any type to a catalogue record including (the url or pathname to where the file is held or stored) so that any user with the appropriate viewer can access the file from the OPAC. A number of sites have used this facility along with Heritage Online to make Heritage a central element of their VLE (Virtual Learning Environment).

Notes

Extensive free text notes, such as abstract information, may be added. These can be categorised for ease of editing and retrieval. Notes are fully indexed for searching via the OPAC and the field can accommodate pages of information if necessary. The item catalogued in the above example, therefore, would be a 'hit' in a search that included any combination of the following terms: ‘street crime’, ‘police’, ‘probation’, ‘neighbourhood’, ‘public safety’, ‘initiatives’ etc.

Dates Facility (for administrative reports)

It is amazing how quickly much of the stock in a modern resource centre becomes obsolete and needs to be updated, replaced or discarded. Heritage not only monitors the usage of existing stock, but can also help staff keep on top of resource review.

The Heritage catalogue record includes the Date Types field, which offers library staff the ability to add dates to catalogue records for administrative purposes, such as when the item needs to be removed, renewed or updated.

Regular reports can then be produced (each week, each month etc) with details of items expiring, needing updating etc to ensure that library staff keep up to date with administrative tasks in the library.

Thesaurus

Heritage is supplied with a blank thesaurus, so that users can either build their own or import a relevant thesaurus from another source (although IS Oxford would need to undertake the import as a consultancy service).

Once the thesaurus has been defined, it is possible to link to cross referenced subject headings, and control the entry of keywords when cataloguing. A ‘See also’ facility exists in the OPAC, which will look at all the terms related to the search term in the thesaurus (i.e. broader, narrower, preferred and related terms) and will give the number of hits for each term. Clicking on one of the terms will run a search on that term. If a preferred term exists, the cataloguer will be prompted if they try and enter the wrong term (e.g. if they tried to enter’NHS’ it could be set to say ‘NHS is not a preferred term. Please select one from the list below’ - i.e. ‘National Health Service’).

Hierarchical Subjects

Subjects in Heritage can be arranged in hierarchies if required. These hierarchies can be visualised as a ‘tree’ with general terms at the top and more specific terms underneath. Thus you will be able to specify that, for example, 'Football' is below 'Sport' in a hierarchy. In 2008, the Heritage OPAC and Heritage Online will provide the facility for users to elect to either search just on the subject term they have entered, or ‘explode’ the search to include all narrower subject headings.

Variant spellings

There is no spellcheck facility in Heritage (as data entry is generally controlled by authority files in relevant fields), but the variant spellings function allows you to specify that records containing a particular term are retrieved when a related term is searched for in Enquiry. This can cover, for example, common misspellings and typing errors, or British/American English spelling variations. The alternative terms are indexed so searching on either term will retrieve the record. Thus when common spelling errors are entered as search terms, records with the correct spelling of the term are retrieved, and when any of the alternative spellings are entered, records containing any of the alternatives are retrieved.

Groups

The Groups field in the catalogue record can be used for two distinct purposes. It can either be used for creating reservation groups or creating reading lists.

Reservation groups enable a user to place a single reservation on a group of items, so that the first item returned satisfies the reservation and removes it from all the other items in the group. This is useful if a number of different versions of the same item are available e.g. different editions of 'Hamlet' with different ISBNs. Each are essentially the same, so any edition could satisfy the reservation, and the groups facility is provided to facilitate this.

Catalogue records can also be grouped together in the same way to form Reading lists (e.g. for academic courses). Students could then access reading lists for printing, emailing, copying or exporting to other software from the standard Heritage OPAC. All they have to do is search for their course code and the list of items on the reading list for that course is displayed.

An item can belong to numerous groups if necessary, and they can be edited by library staff at any time.

Character Sets

Heritage recognises many different character sets and formats, including ASCII; non-Roman character sets and other European languages that require different characters. We also support html.

Heritage does not presently support the Unicode character sets.

Knowledge Management

Heritage is designed primarily as a Resource Management system, but it is possible to use our product for certain aspects of knowledge and document management. The ability to catalogue any type of resource is not limited to physical resources – electronic documents and even personnel can be catalogued with relevant information recorded in the Notes field (notes of any type can be added to our standard list, so, for example, you may wish to add a note type of ‘Expertise’ when recording details of individuals). The Notes field is fully indexed so a general search on a term within Heritage would search all resources, be they books, serials, judgements, reports, websites, pdfs or even people.

Summary list of cataloguing features

General

Facilities

Data Entry Controls

Copy information (Accessions)

Details