orcalogo

 Storing and purging order records in local databases

Survey

Date: Wed, 22 Dec 1999 11:52:34 -0800 (PST)
From: Nancy Nathanson 
To: Orbis Technical/System contacts ,boggs@ups.edu,
    Carol Carr , Barbara Valentine, ckamilos@georgefox.edu, Laura Groves ,
    hurlbutj@oit.edu, jin@sou.edu, kunkelm@oit.edu, Tom Leonhardt ,
    marcia.bianchi@reed.edu, Teresa Montgomery , piatz@up.edu, richard.griffin@orst.edu,
    ritter@lclark.edu, sieracki@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU, spidald@eou.edu
Cc: Adriana Pilecky-Dekajlo , Marjorie Bloss ,
Subject: Order records in database


To:  Orbis Technical/systems contacts
From: Nancy Nathanson
ORDER RECORDS IN DATABASE

** Please forward to Acquisitions, Catalog or other staff as appropriate**

I'm reviewing recent database statistics (see table below) and notice that
the number of order records in a member's database varies from about 4% to
11% of the number of bibliographic records.  Excluding CRL, Whitman and
COCC, the average is about 7.6%.  Does that sound about right?

When do you delete "old" order records from your database? Ongoing, or
periodically in batches (sometimes called "purge")?

        If periodically, that would account for some numbers being a
        little "high"  and others being "low" depending on the purging
        cycle at that institution.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Nancy Nathanson, Orbis Coordinator
nnathans@oregon.uoregon.edu    phone: (541>346-1860
--------------------------------------------------------------

        report  bibliog.        order
        date    records         records
____________________________________________
CRL     Oct.14   509,488        14,546   2.9%
EOU     Oct.14   160,864         6,434   4.0%
GFU     Oct.14   124,998         9,161   7.3%
L&C     Oct.14   293,364        27,542   9.4%
Linf    Oct.14   143,656        16,141  11.2%
OIT     Oct.14    75,798         6,753   8.9%
OSU     Oct.14 1,016,234        43,143   4.2%
Reed    Oct.14   305,604        18,522   6.1%
SOU     Oct.14   259,399        18,904   7.3%
UO      Oct.14 1,346,441       130,639   9.7%
UP      Oct.14   150,641         9,690   6.4%
UPS     Oct.14   363,253        25,585   7.0%
WOU     Oct.14   137,518        11,031   8.0%
Whit    Oct.14   287,166             0   0.0%
WU      Oct.14   272,729        24,842   9.1%
COCC    Dec.20    63,032         9,844  15.6%

Replies

UPS

Once each year, we purge order records that have had no financial activity the last three years.

Carmel Thompson
cathompson@ups.edu
Acquisitions Supervisor
University of Puget Sound

SOU

We remove order records once a year, ideally in August or September. We remove the records that are 3 years old, leaving old records from the past two years and records of the current fiscal year. This year we removed those three-year old records a few weeks ago. We also have a larger number of order records because of switching periodical vendors two years ago. A number of our periodical titles have two order records attached, one for the old vendor and one for the new vendor. Sometime this year we'll clean up the duplicate periodical order records no longer needed.
Teresa

UO

1) We create order records for *everything*. Some libraries do not create order records for gifts or approval books (or sometimes not even for serials!).

2) We use order records to track material in the cataloging backlog and we do have a substantial backlog. Some libraries create item records instead for the materials in their backlogs.

3) Our retention policy for order records has changed. We have shifted from a policy of only having the current fiscal year online (plus outstanding orders or backloged material from earlier years), to one of keeping order records indefinitely. In practical terms I think we should only keep current year plus five but we'll discuss that with Collection Development when we get there. We have current year plus two now. Most libraries I know of purge order records annually. I know of a few that purge quarterly. And I know of a few that keep the records indefinitely.

Nancy Slight-Gibney

Linfield

At this point, we onlyu purge cancelled order records, and those on an irregular basis. Or perhaps regularly irregular? Twice a year or so--but not regularly as clock work--I go through and check cancelled order records, purge some, make new orders for others depending on what's in print again and what's available for op vendors.

Mary Margaret

OIT

OIT purges order records periodically. We have been saving the records to a tape, but are now importing order record information into the item record and are planning eventually to just delete the order records, rather than archiving them. Do you know what other Orbis libraries are doing?

Marita Kunkel
Technical Services Librarian
Oregon Institute of Technology

WU-Law

Our plan is to wait to purge until it looks like we'd need to buy more. Since we don't use the accounting functions of III, our solution probably doesn't make much sense to any other library.

Lysa
Elysabeth (Lysa) Hall, J.W. Long Law Library, Willamette University College of Law

Reed

Reed purges old order records (status=a AND cat date after 05/01/94 AND received date between 940501 and the desired cut off date) twice a year when we need to free up order records for new materials. I do not use a set date, but it works out to about every 6 months. I archive the records as a word document which is backed up on a zip disk. I have not had any difficulty locating an archived order record the few times I needed to do so.

Jack Levine

Lewis & Clark

The Watzek Library at LC tries to maintain the last 18 Months of Orders that were submited. We purge records once every 6 months. The law school on the other hand just removes orders that no longer have fiscal relevance, periodically.

Brent Ritter, LIBRARY SYSTEMS COORDINATOR

OSU

As far as Acquisitions is concerned we are not purging order records, at least in any systematic or major way. The order records in question are those that float in the system without being attached to the catalogued bib record, this resulting from the timing of the migration of Cataloging and Acquisitions to III. Lisa deletes them occasionally as she comes across them.

Debbie Hackleman