Question

We have found an odd situation where the titles selected to fulfill Resource Sharing Requests (it's happened with both Borrowing and Lending) do not match the actual title being requested, nor the barcodes. What is causing the Borrowing/Lending Locate to find a "successful" match with an incorrect title?

Answer

There are multiple reasons why a Borrowing/Lending Locate can result in a "successful" match on an incorrect title, but the most common reason is due to a lack of identifiers within the request. The more identifiers (such as title, ISBN/ISSN, System Control Number, LCCN) that are included, the more successful a Locate will be. When there are not sufficient identifiers, some of the common causes for these mismatches include:

• a Title matches on a resource's Table of Contents

  • When the Locate is using the title as a point of match, it will search not just for a matching title, but will also search the contents of a record's MARC 505 $t field; if a keyword match is found within a 505 $t, the Locate will consider that resource to be a positive match for the Request

• a resource has multiple System Control Numbers

  • In a Resource Sharing/AFN Request, the System Control Number field will search for not just OCLC numbers in resources, but instead will search for any matches in a resource's MARC 035 field(s); the Locate is searching using the numerical string of the identifier and ignores any/all prefixes (ex: for a given identifier of "(OCoLC)12345678" the Locate will only be searching by "12345678")

• Article last edited: 23-Jun-2022