CARLI Maintenance Priority: MFHDs with URLs in Summary Holdings 866

Some of CARLI's "Suggested Priorities for Bibliographic, Holding, and Item Record Maintenance" require that CARLI staff run reports centrally to gather the details efficiently for all libraries. One such report is "MFHD_866withURL," which identifies holding records (i.e., MFHDs) that contain one or more 866 fields that also contain a URL (as identified by presence of "http").

The MFHD 866 field is designated as textual holdings data, commonly called "summary holdings," and intended to report on the extent of a library's holdings of a serial or multi-part resource. The 866 does not include a subfield for a URL, and discovery layers will typically not create a link for any URLs found there.

CARLI staff ran this report on October 23, finding 23 libraries with at least one MFHD with this condition. If your library has one or more of these MFHDs, you will find a report in your library's secure FTP account: "MFHD_866withURL_xxx.txt" where "xxx" is your library's three letter code. The report will include the MFHD_ID of the record in question, followed by the raw MARC text of the 866 field (through the first 500 characters).

If your library did not have any MFHDs with this condition, you will not receive a MFHD_866withURL report. Well done!

Tips for resolving errors:

Library staff will find that many records contain an 866 field that should have been entered as 856 fields. The presence of a $u will be the most obvious clue; sometimes also accompanied by indicator values "40", "41", or "42" (though these are valid 866 indicators as well).  Locate the MFHD in the report, test the URL to verify that it still works, then change the 866 to 856.

Some 866 fields appear to represent public notes that would be more suited for 852 $z. Other 866 fields appear to represent links and note text to other forms, or to earlier or later titles.  For these, locate the MFHD in the report and test the URL. Consider modifying the note content to an 852$z or the whole field to an 856 with a subfield $z for the note information. For references to other formats (e.g., a print resource also available online), or earlier/later titles, consider entering the 856 with indicators "41" (http, version of resource) or "42" (http, related resource). You may choose instead to add a catalog record for the online version and fully describe those holdings on that record.

Other cases may appear as well. If your record doesn't match either of the above examples, or you're unsure of how to resolve the error, feel free to contact CARLI staff.

Watch for future Maintenance Priority reminders.