The PrairieCat Clean-Up Project

One of the core services of the Cataloging Maintenance Center is the cleanup of library catalog records.

In early 2019, the Cataloging Maintenance Center (CMC) was asked to work on a clean-up project for the PrairieCat consortium, located in the Reaching Across Illinois Library System service area. The project involved bibliographic records that did not have an OCLC number. The project began in April 2019, and the CMC has resolved over 10,752 records in the PrairieCat system since then (as of Oct. 31, 2021)! Ideally, each CMC staff member works on this long-term project one day a week.

How the Cleanup Project Works

John Slanicky, Database Coordinator for PrairieCat, sends the CMC staff a file of bibliographic records from their online catalog, Encore. The files will be viewed in Marc Report.

The CMC then locates a bibliographic record in OCLC, makes sure that the record is cataloged using RDA standards, and then sends this record from OCLC to Ed Zanelli at PrairieCat to overlay the existing record currently in their catalog.

Each week, the CMC cataloger sends Ed Zanelli their spreadsheet and file of all the OCLC records that are to be overlayed onto the existing record currently in the Encore database. He then does his merging process, which allows the records in their database to set library holdings in OCLC for discovery.

If your Illinois library consortium has a database that need updating or correcting, contact the Cataloging Maintenance Center to see how they can help.