Holdings format standards

Libraries may continue to follow their own preferences in the formatting of holdings statements. However, libraries are encouraged to review their practice to take advantage of the improved subfielding available in Libraries Australia, particularly for serial holdings.

Please see Libraries Australia and Libraries Australia Client manuals for further details on coding and inputting holdings on the Libraries Australia databases.

If you have any questions please contact us.


Electronic resources : Holdings guidelines

Introduction

The importance of electronic materials to Australian libraries continues to grow. Increasing percentages of library budgets are spent on electronic resources, ‘electronic preferred’ policies are in place in most university libraries, and initiatives such as consortia contracts are extending the importance of electronic resources in libraries.

However the recent survey by the EAG on Electronic Resources revealed that only half of the respondents record holdings for electronic materials on the ANBD. The most commonly cited reason for the non-reporting of holdings was that their licence agreement with the provider of the resource restricted or prohibited document delivery. This rationale was further reinforced by an assumption held by many libraries that the ANBD is not the place to record holdings for items with restricted access provisions.

The ANBD policy has always been to list holdings even when materials are not available for interlibrary loan. Even if document delivery is not permitted, holdings on ANBD records still provides many benefits for resource sharing and resource management, including:

Libraries are strongly encouraged to record their holdings for the electronic resources that they own or licence on the ANBD.

Recommended format for holdings data

The main purpose of the holdings statements on the ANBD is to locate the resources and to indicate availability for document delivery. An additional function is to provide MARC records, which are suitable for export (as a set) from Libraries Australia to the local systems of libraries that hold the collection.

  1. The holdings statement is entered and displayed online in Libraries Australia in field 850, and exported in field 984 of the MARC record.

  2. The use of one of the following generic holdings statements to indicate availability for document delivery is recommended:

    850 $aQGU $cOnline access. Not available for document delivery.

    850 $aNMQU $cOnline access. Available for document delivery.

    850 $aWU $cOnline access. Available for document delivery restrictions apply.

  3. As an alternative to a generic holdings statement, each library may nominate its preferred customised holdings statement to be applied to any record or collection of records on the ANBD. It is still strongly recommended that customised statements include details of any access or document delivery restrictions.

  4. For records corresponding to electronic aggregations or datasets, each library may also apply their holdings statements to either the complete set of records or a defined subset of records.

  5. It is also recommended that libraries apply their Local System Numbers to their electronic holdings on the ANBD:

    850 $aWU $bS123456 $cOnline access. Available for document delivery restrictions apply.

  6. Each holdings statement can also indicate the coverage of the electronic version:

    850 $eVol. 12- $g1996-