Ex Libris MELvyl Tells (EL Mel Tells)!
Volume 2, Number 3, June 2003
In this issue:
Holdings Display for Regional Storage Facility Records
The two regional storage facilities present different characteristics in their holdings displays because of differences in how the records are sent to Melvyl.
Southern Regional Storage Facility
UCLA processes materials into the SRLF and includes SRLF holdings on the ORION2 records that are sent to Melvyl. In these records, SRLF accession numbers are sent in lieu of call numbers since the accession number is the call number for those records. For serial items, only the first accession number is retained on the Melvyl record.
Examples:A monograph record:
A serial record:
Northern Regional Storage Facility
Although Berkeley manages the NRLF, each of the Northern campuses submits its own NRLF holdings to MELVYL. For this reason, you can see a record that lists UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, UC San Francisco or UC Berkeley as the contributing source, but the holdings statement shows the item as being at NRLF. There is no NRLF accession number because the campus record is not updated with this information when the item is processed into the facility. However, the call number from the campus record is included in the holdings display.
Only the UC Berkeley records for NRLF holdings will have the NRLF accession number on them. This is because UCB's library system is updated by the NRLF accession process. For UCB records, both a call number, and a single accession number will often be present in the holdings display. Like the SRLF record processing, only a single accession number is retained in Melvyl for multi-volume items.
Campus Record Displays for Storage Facilities Materials
The display of records for the storage facilities is different for the northern and southern campuses. All of the northern campuses display the NRLF holdings with their campus records. So when choosing the Library optional limits from the pull-down menu for UC Santa Cruz, for example, you are searching the UCSC campus holdings as well as NRLF holdings. Searching in the Author/Title index for "Stegner Candy" yields three records (as of this writing). One is a record in NRLF, contributed by UC Berkeley. To limit ONLY to those records shelved at the Santa Cruz campus, use Command Search with wid=UCSC. Your search for this record would be wat=stegner candy and wid=ucsc. This yields two records, both on the Santa Cruz campus. The southern campuses' records display differently (except for UCLA): when limiting to a southern campus, the campuses have chosen to include only those records that are physically held on their campus, not at SRLF. (Limiting to UCLA will display both campus library and SRLF holdings.) To display records for materials held both at the campus and SRLF, use Command Search in this way: wid = UCSD or SRLF. Decisions about campus shelving locations and the Regional Library Facilities were made in consultation with campus SOPAG representatives.
What is a Government Document?
The category of government documents is a broad one. The library record format contains a single code that defines whether a record is a government document, and at the same time what type of document it is. This includes all levels of government, from local municipalities to counties, states and federal governments, as well as documents of international organizations such as the United Nations. Every record that is coded as being some type of government document is indexed as a government document in the MELVYL database.
Some items that are government documents may seem surprising to most users. For example, all documents published by the University of California, including the University of California Press, are coded as state documents because the University is a state institution. These documents are indistinguishable from other state documents, such as those coming from the state legislature, in terms of their coding.
Known problem:
Because of the way the index was originally implemented, some items with erroneous or unexpected government document codes were indexed as government documents. This will be fixed in future releases of MELVYL.