ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 64 | August 2003
Western Australian Special Library Contributes to the National Catalogue
Lisa Wright, Librarian for the Library & Information Service, Wildlife Science Collection, Department of Conservation and Land Management in Western Australia, describes her newly made contribution to the National Bibliographic Database
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The Library was built in 1985 as part of the Western Australian Wildlife Research Centre, situated in the middle of Woodvale Nature Reserve, 20 kilometres north of Perth. Lisa Wright has been there since 1989 |
The National Library’s letter arrived in my in-tray back in December 2000, stating that the Wildlife Science Collection was ‘ranked as high priority for research purposes’, and requesting that our cataloguing data be added to the National Bibliographic Database (NBD). My first reaction was one of pride—my collection was seen as important outside of the Department! The second reaction was horror: ‘Oh no, how on earth am I going to convert my database to MARC format!’. Real nightmare stuff.
At the time, I was in process of compiling a Research Bibliography going back to 1896 (in my spare time, whatever that is), and I therefore put the Library’s request off until I had finished the project. Two years later, with that mammoth task out of the way, I put off the Library’s request once again, this time with the excuse that I had to catch-up on work. Feeling rather guilty about it all, in my 2002 annual appraisal I put that one of my goals before my next appraisal would be to get the Wildlife Science Collection records into the NBD.
Okay, decision made—now time to do something about it. I read through the Kinetica Cataloguing Standards page, then emailed the Library’s HelpDesk and asked if they could let me know of anyone else using Inmagic DB/TextWorks to load their records to the NBD. I was surprised when I was only given one name—that of the Wentworth Area Health Service in New South Wales. The Health Service’s Isabel Watson told me that they sent their records using a specific report format, and that the conversion was done by the National Library at the other end. Isabel very kindly sent me a copy of the report format, which she and Margot Drake had set up for the Batch*Link process. Ian Dunn at the National Library also sent me a copy of the Input file specifications that Data Magician uses for the DB/TextWorks load file.
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The Wildlife Science Collection was established in 1992, when the titles for the Forest Science collection were relocated |
Lisa Wright’s office and the Loans/Returns counter |
Now, armed with the knowledge that I didn’t have to MARC anything, I tweaked the report format to suit my database—and there they were, my first few records ready to be tested! With a bit more tweaking the report format was suitable. As this load was only for monographs, I then had to find the monograph records in the catalogue. As we have three collections in three locations, and one librarian in each location, this little exercise exposed some inconsistencies. Nonetheless, after a clean-up, and the omission of interim records, 24 062 records were ready to be sent via ftp to the National Library for loading to the NBD. All that procrastination, for what turned out to be only a couple of hours actual work!
I was thrilled to receive my first emailed request for a title found on Kinetica. There have been a few more requests since—even one from New Zealand. Not too many to overburden my Inter-Library- Loan-hat-wearing day, just an odd request here and there.
It does give one a sense of satisfaction though, knowing that the resources
one has so carefully maintained have become accessible to a global audience!
—Lisa Wright, Librarian, Library & Information Service, Wildlife
Science Collection, Department of Conservation & Land Management, WA
| Contents list for this issue of Gateways |
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