Community Zone: CONSER record conversions (January 2020 - Present)

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What is happening to non-electronic serials records in the Community Zone?

Update Apr. 2024: Removed "Add 245$h “electronic resource” (AACR2 records only)" AND "Add 655 “Electronic journals” field" from list of conversions.

Update Mar. 2023: We have now finished converting the remaining CONSER records with print metadata in the Community Zone to electronic, and plan on regular updates to remove print metadata from CZ CONSER records.

Update Feb. 2022: Currently about 4.5K CONSER records are converted to electronic in the Community Zone, using the method described below. Further mass CONSER record conversions are currently on hold, until metadata corrections needed to continue this project with high accuracy are completed.

Please follow this article for updates and news, and thank you for your patience.

Current Status

CONSER (Cooperative Online Serials Program) records are currently imported to the Alma Community Zone on a weekly basis, and are the main source for Community Zone serials enrichment. For more information on the serials enrichment process, please see this article.

Our system logic for enrichment prioritizes CONSER electronic records with electronic ISSNs, and we will always use these if they are available. However, if CONSER has either not yet cataloged an electronic version, or if there is no electronic ISSN available for matching purposes, the Community Zone may use a print record.

The Community Zone currently stores about 72K print CONSER records in its Central Knowledgebase, with the following characteristics:

In addition to containing print fields (e.g. 300 field containing print physical description), the OCLC number for these records is usually for the print record (as noted on the Ideas Exchange: Please quit using print records).
However, the Form of item (008 pos. 23) is already converted to “o” (online) via normalization.
Electronic ISSNs are maintained in the 022$a, and print ISSNs in the 776$x field.

Future Status

Starting in the Alma January 2020 release, Ex Libris will begin to process more complete conversions of CONSER records from print to electronic, while maintaining CONSER updates and quality control. Specifically, this will allow us to:

Apply blanket conversions of Community Zone CONSER records from print to electronic;
Maintain ongoing weekly CONSER updates to temporarily converted records
- Note: During weekly updates, any new electronic records directly from CONSER will replace temporarily converted records.

Overview of custom serial print>electronic conversions

As an interim solution in cases where CONSER does not yet have an electronic version record (with electronic ISSN), the following temporary conversions are applied.

Note: The 920 field is for temporary identification purposes. When we receive a new electronic record from CONSER, this replaces the conversion, and the 920 field will be removed.

Change 300 to “1 online resource”
Change 337 and 338 to online fields
(If applicable) Remove (Print) or (Print ed.) from 210, 222, 130
Add 920 field “exl_impl conversion”
New 776
- Add subfield $i Print version
- Title from 130 or 245 to subfield $t
- If Print ISSN in 022$a, move to 776$x
- Remove 010 and move to 776$w
- Remove 035 with OCLC number and move to 776$w

Example record before conversion

Example record after conversion

Article last edited: 5-April-2023