A Case Study on the Path to Resource Discovery

Abstract

A meeting in April 2015 explored the potential withdrawal of valuable collections of microfilm held by the University of Maryland, College Park Libraries. This resulted in a project to identify OCLC record numbers (OCN) for addition to OCLC’s Chadwyck-Healey Early English Books Online (EEBO) KBART file.[i] Initially, the project was an attempt to adapt cataloging workflows to a new environment in which the copy cataloging of e-resources takes place within discovery system tools rather than traditional cataloging utilities and MARC record set or individual record downloads into online catalogs. In the course of the project, it was discovered that the microfilm and e-version bibliographic records contained metadata which had not been utilized by OCLC to improve its link resolution and discovery services for digitized versions of the microfilm resources. This metadata may be advantageous to OCLC and to others in their work to transition from MARC to linked data on the Semantic Web. With MARC record field indexing and linked data implementations, this collection and others could better support scholarly research.