Reminder: The CAT database processing underway soon

During December, the Libraries will be sending our entire database (almost 6 million records) to be processed by our authority control vendor, Backstage Library Works. The goals of this processing are:

— To provide a fresh and up-to-date authority file; this should maximize the consistency of access to our data through The CAT and through LionSearch.

— To make the changes associated with the new cataloging rules, RDA, in as many records as possible (not just the most recent ones); almost all of these changes will only be visible on the “more information” tab in The CAT; the most noticeable changes will be:

  • expansion of many abbreviations to their full forms — e.g. “333 pages” instead of “333 p.”
  • inclusion of fields that identify the type of content and the type of carrier in every record; these elements replace the General Material Designations (GMDs) that were included in the titles of many records; existing GMDs are not being deleted, but are not being added to new records; the new content/carrier fields will be used instead.
  • publication, distribution, manufacture, and copyright information is being split into separate fields, with appropriate labels

In addition to these changes, some new keyword and browse indexes are being added; the keyword indexes are available in both The CAT and WorkFlows, but the new browse indexes will only be available in WorkFlows. The most useful of these new indexes is a separate index for Genre/Form terms (which until now have been included in the Subject indexes).

Because the entire database — and the authority file — needs to be reloaded and indexed, it is necessary to switch The CAT to the TEST server for the entire Winter break. We expect that all the processing will be done sometime on December 28.

Once the database has been reloaded, a copy will be sent to ProQuest who will load it into Summon and rebuild all the indexes for LionSearch. This reindexing is estimated to take 2-3 weeks, and we anticipate that it will be completed on or near the beginning of classes in January. While the new indexes are being built, LionSearch will continue to be available using the old indexes.