Abstract

Cataloging ebooks is difficult to do well, as they are often purchased in large collections, sometimes with only low-quality cataloging copy available. MARC records may be provided upfront in a large batch, or trickle in one at a time as they become available. Records may contain links that point nowhere, to the wrong book, or to an offer to sell you the book you already own. Loading records sight unseen may introduce inconsistency or overlay good print records with poor electronic ones, making the catalog much more difficult to search.

This article describes in more detail the major challenges in ebook cataloging, record normalization and access checking, and introduces Normac: an open source web-based tool for processing MARC records.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-17-2013

Notes/Citation Information

Published in Code4Lib, issue 20.

© 2013 Kathryn Lybarger

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

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