Researchers often need to be able to find specific items contained a collection of “works”.

These Collections can be of any kind:

• Poems
• Art
• Famous Speeches
• Whatever… (short of ideas right now)

When you come across a “collection” type resource you need to make a decision…

1. Is it useful for researchers to be able to look-up the parts by Title, Author, Subject and be able to see more information about each part? OR
2. Is it ok to just let them find the part under a Notes search?

Option 1 – Use the Link function

• Type in the name of the “collection” resource, all its cataloguing details and attach a barcode to the item.
• After saving the Host record, use the Link option to add a catalogue record for each detail important enough to do so.
• You might choose to add Linked records for the obviously important (regularly requested) parts and list the whole lot in the notes field (trouble is… who decides what’s important and likely to be requested if there are a bunch of empowered independent learners lurking about!?).

Option 2 – Use the Notes Field

• Just type in as much detail about the table of contents as you feel is useful.
• A list of the items in the resource does the job although it is useful to have the Author or Artists name along with their work.
• All details in the Notes field is searchable in the Enquiry module under Title and Other searches and Notes.

Some other ideas…

• Linking offers you the ability to have a parent record and multiple records linked to it.  Used for:
  • Cataloguing kits that contain a number of parts.  Each part may be worthy of separate catalogue details and subjects but you would like to keep the kit as a single unit.
  • Videos or DVD’s that have multiple programs copied on them.  Each program has its own title and subject details.
    Poems in a poetry collection book… each poem may warrant a catalogue entry because there are interesting publication details that researchers will want to find.
  • Famous speeches in a resource is another example.
  • When someone looks up a Host or Linked record in the Enquiry module they can click a button to view all the other parts of the record…
• Linked records only have one barcode (on the Host record)… if one part is needed the whole unit must be taken. For example:
  • A teacher might want to borrower a video that is linked to a kit.
  • The kit in question has multiple parts…a video, information sheets, a teachers guide and student task sheets.
  • The entire kit is taken and since the “master” record is the one with the barcode all the others will appear as “on loan” in the system when they are looked-up.

Some Examples:

Linking records for a Kit

Linking records for a DVD or Video

Linking records for a Poetry collection

Linking records for an Audio CD

Tags: link anthology, link audio cd, link cd, link dvd, link kit, link poetry, link video, linking resources