[Evergreen-general] How do you keep your OCLC holdings up to date?

[Elaine Hardy]

We send files once a month to OCLC to update holdings. Chris Sharp will
have more info on how that happens. We haven't had any issues with the file
not being processed within a few days. We have had issues where passwords
have expired or something else prevents the files from going through. We
could do it more often under our contract with OCLC; but, a month works for
our libraries.

PINES only updates holdings and doesn't delete since Evergreen doesn't
report the last copy for a system in a consortial environment where we all
have separate OCLC symbols. Each system is responsible for their own
deletes and we have a report they use  to help. In reality, we know that
some libraries never delete their holdings. OCLC does have a new, free mini
reclamation process that we hope to take advantage of again to keep
holdings up to date.

Elaine

J. Elaine Hardy, PINES and Collaborative Projects Manager
------------------------------

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On Wed, Feb 8, 2023 at 12:12 PM Josh Stompro via Evergreen-general <
evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org> wrote:

> Hello Benjamin, we use the OCLC Metadata api to keep our holdings up to
> date in OCLC on a twice daily basis.  It is a process based off of a custom
> db table that just holds all the OCLC numbers found in our DB, and a few
> bash and perl scripts.  We don't try and track last copies being withdrawn,
> we just let them know any time an OCLC number is no longer associated with
> any available copies, and vice versa.
>
> I also had a system setup to upload files of adds and deletes, but that
> was such a pain because someone at OCLC had to manually process them, and
> randomly they would just skip doing it.  Or else it would take them between
> 1 and 18 days to process the file.  So I had to also have a system to check
> if or when they actually processed it.  The Metadata api simplifies that.
>
> The metadata api does have issues with subsumed numbers though... they
> will sometimes return the new OCLC number so we can update our numbers, but
> sometimes they won't and they just report the old number as not existing.
> So I think we will have to do a manual reclamation once a year to catch
> those.  (There is a way to get a dump of bibs that OCLC thinks you have to
> compare with what you actually have for free.)
>
> The API hasn't always been smooth going, OCLC switched servers last year
> and cloudflare started blocking all our requests.  There was zero debugging
> info on our end, just dropped connections.  It took months to get in touch
> with someone that could actually fix it.
>
> I'm happy to share all my code and notes if anyone wants it.
>
> Josh
>
> On Wed, Feb 8, 2023 at 10:31 AM Murphy, Benjamin via Evergreen-general <
> evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org> wrote:
>
>> We’ve been talking with some academic libraries about using Evergreen. An
>> important process for them is keeping their OCLC holdings information up to
>> date. For those of you that use OCLC, do you have and sort of automated
>> procedures that help you update your holdings information?
>>
>>
>>
>> *Benjamin Murphy*
>>
>> NC Cardinal Program Manager
>>
>> State Library of North Carolina
>>
>> *benjamin.murphy at ncdcr.gov <benjamin.murphy at ncdcr.gov> * |
>> https://statelibrary.ncdcr.gov/services-libraries/nc-cardinal
>>
>> 109 East Jones Street  | 4640 Mail Service Center
>>
>> Raleigh, North Carolina 27699-4600
>>
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>> Resources.
>>
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>>
>>
>>
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