By Erica Laughlin, Bibliographic Services Manager

As you might have read in a previous RSA newsletter or heard at a recent Directors Advisory Committee (DAC) meeting or Cataloging Chat, RSA has started working with SirsiDynix to clean up some of the approximately 58,000 brief records in WorkFlows. These brief records make up 5.5% of the approximately 1,054,000 total bibliographic records.

There are too many brief records for the RSA Bibliographic Services Department to upgrade manually one-by-one. That approach would take over 30 years! The goal of the large-scale brief record cleanup is not only to enhance the bibliographic quality of our database, but also to improve discoverability and reciprocity in WorkFlows and the RSAcat. Discoverability and reciprocity are two of the RSA core principles.

Here are five things your library can do to help with brief record cleanup:

1. Review reports of your library’s brief items that have never checked out or not in the past ten years.
   Zac from the RSA Bibliographic Services Department is reaching out to libraries to ask them to check their shelves and consider removing two types of brief items:
   • Those brief items that have never checked out in WorkFlows
   • Those brief items that have not checked out in the past ten years since January 1, 2016
   You will receive (or may have already received) an email from Zac if your library has any brief items that fit these criteria. If the items are not missing or lost, RSA can batch remove them from WorkFlows if you have the Director’s permission.
   Some brief items, such as equipment, reference, and special collections, are in-library use only and may not check out. Even if you plan to keep these items, checking your collection to ensure you still have them and discarding them if not would be a good idea.
   At the recent DAC meeting on July 8th, helpful feedback was shared about the report of brief items that have never checked out. Some of the items listed on that report have never checked out because they were recently cataloged.
   In response to the DAC’s feedback, RSA has adjusted the criteria for the never checked out report to exclude recently cataloged brief items that may not have had a chance to check out yet. The report excludes from its output items cataloged in the past thirteen months. That timeframe was chosen because that is the length of time RSA considers an item new for our de-newing process that batch edits new item types to standard ones.
   Thank you to the DAC for their feedback about this report. If you would like an updated report of your library’s brief items that have never checked out so it excludes items cataloged in the past 13 months, please reach out to .
   
   
2. Request a report of your library’s brief items that may be eligible for Cataloging Maintenance Center (CMC) cataloging.
   The RSA Bibliographic Services Department can create a list of the genealogy and local history items in your collection that may be eligible for free CMC cataloging service. Email if you are interested in a report of your items that are potentially CMC eligible. RSA will create the list and email it back to you. For any items you decide to submit to the CMC, look at the “Sending an Item to the CMC” section on the CMC home page. The CMC will let RSA know when the OCLC record for your genealogy or local history item is ready to load into WorkFlows, overlaying the brief record.
   
   
3. Always check WorkFlows first and then OCLC (if your library uses Connexion Client or Record Manager) before creating a brief record to ensure there is no matching record already available.
   Searching WorkFlows and OCLC (if your library uses it) before entering the brief record is crucial to avoid creating a duplicate record for an item that already has a matching record. Duplicate records are not only confusing when searching in WorkFlows and the RSAcat, but they also spread holds across multiple records, resulting in holds taking longer to fill and patrons waiting longer to receive items.
   
   
4. When creating a brief record, always enter the ISBN, ISSN, or UPC if the item has one.
   Entering an ISBN, ISSN, or UPC (referred to as a “standard number”) on the brief record is critical. The standard number provides a valuable match point as RSA continues large-scale cleanup, transferring brief items onto OCLC records in WorkFlows that match based on title, author, and standard number. Entering the standard number on the brief record will also be very useful when RSA uses a third-party tool to batch search OCLC for matching records.
   
   
5. This Fall watch for RSA to send you a report of your library’s brief records without standard numbers.
   Brief records without standard numbers are not only difficult to search, but they are also impossible for RSA’s large-scale processing to merge duplicates and transfer brief items to matching OCLC records.
   This Fall RSA will be reaching out to libraries that have items cataloged on brief records without standard numbers. If you have any of these records, RSA would appreciate your help looking for these items on the shelf, seeing if they have a standard number, and if so, entering the standard number into the report and emailing it back to the RSA Help Desk. RSA will add the standard numbers to the brief records so they can be considered during the next run of processing.
   
   
   Questions about RSA’s brief record cleanup or what you can do to help? Reach out to or 1-866-940-4083.