Creating Holdings Records

This procedure applies to monographs, serials and journals, in all formats.

When do you need to create holdings records?

- Most often this procedure is used when items are sent to the Library Storage Annex or the Harvard Depository (Off Campus Collection), but you still have items in your local collections. For example: there are two copies of a monograph at Rotch, you are sending one to LSA/OCC and are keeping one at Rotch.
- There are two copies of a monograph in Barker, you are keeping one at Barker and sending one to Dewey.
- A serial or journal title has the retention note "latest 10 years in X, earlier in LSA", and you are now ready to send the first item to LSA.
- You have any title (mono, serial or journal) where you need a new holdings record to which to attach the item records, and the existing holdings records are a) still in use and b) don't match your needs in their combination of sublibrary and collection (and occasionally call number prefix and call number)

How do you access the holdings record?

Your starting point can be in the Serials tab in the Acquisitions/Serials module or the Item tab in the Cataloging module. There are three easy ways to access the holdings record:

1. If you have not opened the record for the title you are working on yet, do a search in the Search tab in the Cataloging module. Once you have found your record and it shows in the lower pane, choose the Cataloging button in the lower right hand corner. This will "push" the record directly into the Cataloging module. The Cataloging module will automatically bring up the bibliographic record of the title, to access the or one of the holdings records for this title, highlight and double click on the HOL record in the navigation tree on the left side, below the navigation pane.

2. If you already opened the record in acquisitions/serials or cataloging, go into the navigation pane and click on the Overview radio button.

In the navigation tree that displays in the navigation pane, highlight one of the existing holdings records, then click on the cataloging button located on the right side of the right pane.

3. If you have accessed the record already in the Acquisition/Serials or Cataloging module, choose the Item List in the navigation pane. It doesn't really matter which item of the list is highlighted in the upper pane. In the lower pane, go to tab 6 HOL links. Highlight one of the links to an existing holdings record and choose Edit.

The holdings record will be opened in the Cataloging module.

How do you create a new holdings record?

After you have opened an existing holdings record for the title you are working on, you can duplicate the existing holdings record and then modify it.

1. Using a monograph holdings record as an example, the existing holdings record looks like this:

2. In the toolbar choose "Cataloging", the "Duplicate record". In the dialog box, choose MIT 60 - MIT Holdings and click ok.
3. Please note that you just created an exact replica of the holdings record and you will have a hard time telling whether the duplication happened or not.
4. Make the necessary modifications to the holdings records and save the record to the server .

For more information about modifying holdings records see the Editing Holdings Records documentation.

edited 10/20/05 jjjenkin

MIT Libraries: Local Processing Procedures and Documentation
Comments to: Processing Committee -- proc-com@mit.edu