In this Chapter:

• Getting Started
• Use Cases
• Merging Data

Getting Started

With metadata originating from so many different sources, one of the many challenges faced by catalogers is the ability to merge new data with existing records and do so in a way that doesn’t require a significant amount of manual editing.  New records may add new subjects, new descriptive information, new control numbers — finding ways to automate the capture and enhancement of existing records is an important workflow.  And it’s a hard one.  While OCLC and other cooperative catalogs have made cataloging materials much easier — these systems introduce their own problems as they merge records and deprecate control numbers.  There was a time when the OCLC control number could reliably counted on to be the best match in a record — but as OCLC cleans and merges data — the 001 has become less meaningful — at least on its own, as other fields like the 019 become even more important when doing automated record evaluation.

To help catalogers automated workflows around record and data merging, MarcEdit introduced a Merge Records tool.  This function has undergone a number of different revisions, providing users with a wide range of options and record matching options.  Is it a perfect tool — not by a long-shot, but it provide catalogers with a reliable way to merge record data.

Use Cases

The Merge Records tool has been created to support a very specific set of use cases, and while users have found ways to extend and use the program to support other parts of their workflows, the most common use cases for using this tool are as follows:

As a cataloger, I receive multiple e-journal files.  These MARC records cover many of the same titles, and rather than load an individual record for each vendor, I’d like to just merge the record sets together and keep the different URLs.  

As a cataloger, I received a set of modified records from a vendor.  We already have a local file in our database with lots of local information. I’d like to merge information from the vendor record to my local record.

As a consortial manager, I have a set of records from new member that need to be merged into the catalog.  These records are almost all duplicates, but the OCLC numbers don’t match.  Many of these records have updated OCLC numbers that no longer match the older value in our catalog.  

As a cataloger, I’ve received a single file that contains a lot of duplication.  Some of these duplicates have unique data in the 700 and 856 fields.  I’d like to merge the records in the file together, and only merge unique data from these two fields into the final record set.

The above use cases reference common questions asked on the MarcEdit ListServ, or that I have received personally from users.  The general thread of these queries is…I have a set of records that are like an existing set that includes data I don’t want to lose.  Is it possible to merge data from the new records into the old records. Fortunately, the answer is generally yes.