In This Chapter:

• I’ve got a record, now what
• How do I edit records in the MarcEditor
• I’m made my changes, now what?

Technical services processes have changed a lot since I first started cataloging cartographic records in 1999.  Some of the biggest changes that have occurred in technical services departments have been the widespread use of shelf ready, vendor created metadata for their acquisitions (both print and electronic).  Catalogers today are receiving more vendor supplied metadata and are creating workflows to enable to editing and quality control of that metadata prior to it entering their local catalogs.  For many catalogers, MarcEdit has become a vital part of this process, allowing them the ability to work with the metadata outside their local systems to clean up headings, add notes, correct access points, and remove data not pertinent to their institutions.

For new users however, where does one start?  MarcEdit has become a very large, and at first, complex application.  The tool provides a wide range of tools and options, and for the first time user, it can be somewhat overwhelming.  What’s more, vendors don’t always make life easy.  While may metadata providers utilize the MarcEdit file extension “.mrc” to represent MARC data, this isn’t true in all cases.  Vendors can provide metadata using a wide variety of file extensions (.bin, .dat, .out to name a few), and often times provide very little guidance for libraries looking to use their records.

As stated earlier, the purpose of this book is to help users, novice and experienced, to make better use of the MarcEdit application.  And while there are many topics found throughout this text that will help users looking to modify their library metadata, this particular chapter is for those novice users looking to know where I get started.  MarcEdit provides a number of ways for users who receive vendor provided data to open that data, view it, edit it, and load it back into their local system.  For novice and first time users that have received metadata from a vendor, have downloaded MarcEdit and are now wondering, “Now what?”, read on…

I’ve got a record, now what?

I think that one of the biggest strength’s and challenges of working with the MarcEdit application is that there are generally more than one way to do anything.  The program was designed with the idea that the application should be able to adapt to your workflows, not the other way around.  However, because of this, the program can sometimes be difficult for the first time user looking to make those first record edits.  Consider the following scenario:

My library has recently purchased access to 2500 ebooks from Acme EBooks.  As part of the contract, Acme has provided the library with MARC records for each available ebook.  The records are ok, but we’d like to do some work on them.  First and foremost, the records include multiple URLs and we’d like remove all the access points except for the one pertinent to our library.  Secondly, these records lack call numbers and we’d like the items to show up in our systems browse features.  Finally, there are some notes and quality issues we’d like to deal with before loading the data into our catalog.  We’ve downloaded MarcEdit, but I’m not sure where to go next.  The file the vendor set me is myrecords2013xxx.bin, can you help?

This is actually a fairly common scenario, a good way to introduce users to the MarcEdit application.  So what does the user do?