NHM SIL prototype union catalogue

The document below was sent to a few of the Smithsonian people on 6 Feb 2006 and accompanies an Access database. This is very much a work in progress but indicative of some of the sort of things which may be achievable in this area. If the file linking works OK, you should be able to see the zipped file with the Access database at union_cat_draft1.zip

Bernard

NHM and SIL Union Catalogue – Preliminary Draft

These notes accompany the access database nhm_sil_ucat_v2.mdb

Description:

The main data tables are NHM_DATA and SIL_DATA. The third table UNION_CAT is derived via query union_catalogue


NHM_DATA:

· Derived from criteria used for our submission to SUNCAT http://www.suncat.ac.uk/ (still in progress).
· Item type = SERIAL and not shadowed in the OPAC.
· Monographic serials excluded at present.
· Final column 596_FLD indicates which library/libraries the title is held in and is decoded as:

BOTANY 1
ENTOMOLOGY 2
PALAEONTOLOGY 3
GENERAL 4
ZOOLOGY 5
TRING 6
MINERALOGY 8
ANTHROPOLOGY 10


· 591 field is relevant (this is the "holdings lack xxx" info) but has not been taken into account in any query.
· The relationship between 590/591 and 596 can be a one - many, but mapping order is not assured.

SIL_DATA

· Only first ISSN per row has been queried in SIL data
· Only first holdings statement per row has been queried in SIL data

Holdings Notes:

A perl script to get start and end date has been used to extract from SIL and NHM holdings data. It may be 90% accurate. Taking unique titles from each main data table may mean holdings info has been lost.

Findings:

SIL Data

· 13,611 records,
· 10,800 unique titles
· 7,000 with ISSNS (51%)
· 477 have more than 1 ISSN, 27 have 3
· 8569 with no holdings info (62%)

NHM Data

· 30931 records
· 30727 unique titles
· 22350 with ISSNs (72%)
· 722 with no holdings info (2%)


Merged info:


· 3806 "unique title" matches (unique titles by ISSN + unique titles by TITLE)
· titles held only at NHM: 27048
· titles held only at SIL: 10278
· 6742 titles at SIL with no holdings.

Basic Holdings Analysis:

· 8320 titles with some pre-1923 material
· number of years run before 1923, (est) 240,000 / 6000 = avg 40 yrs.





Feb 6th 2006


Bernard M Scaife
Electronic Services Librarian
*
Email: b.scaife@nhm.ac.uk
Telephone +44 (0)20 7942 5031
*
NEG14, Library and Information Services, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Rd, London SW7 5BD, UK
Website: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/