Osmosis update - all and more!

Osmosis is a project in conjunction with the National Library which involves uploading the entire eLGAR holdings to the National Library where they are checked against existing records and a new national database created. These holdings are picked up by Worldcat, which is linked to Google and other search engines. This means that a Worldcat or Google search will lead back to the eLGAR catalogue.

Our full holdings load was completed in early December, and an update file completed yesterday. We'll have a further update in late January 2009 before the end of the Osmosis pilot.

OSMOSIS update - our holdings on the national catalogue

eLGAR is participating in the pilot of the National Library’s new OSMOSIS system. National Library has commissioned this system to improve loading catalogue records and holdings information to the National Union Catalogue. This supports shared cataloguing and Interloans.

We recently provided over a million records – a total update of all our holdings, and a real enrichment to the national database. Early analysis indicates that almost half of our fiction records will be new to the NUC. You should see them appear in about a month. Last year we sent approximately 400,000 non-fiction records in a partial update using the older process. Almost 40,000 of those were new to the NUC. Special thanks to Sarah Menzies, Jo Davidson and Janet Rumming for specialist advice.

Osmosis pilot - eLGAR holdings on the National Union Catalogue

National Library will be using a new piece of software, called "Osmosis", to pilot a new method of adding NZ libaries' holdings to the National Union Catalogue (NUC). In July last year, the National Library invited a number of libraries, including eLGAR, to be part of an initial trial of the new software. Porirua Public Library, Auckland University, AUT, Canterbury University and Victoria University are also taking part, along with the National Library itself.

Holdings on the NZ NUC will be automatically loaded to OCLC's Worldcat

eLGAR is scheduled to send its next extract of holdings to the National Library in July 2008. These records will form part of the pilot project. The last complete refresh of all eLGAR libaries' holdings on Te Puna was carried out late in 2007 - the first time since July 2005. Because the National Library is understandably reluctant to carry out any further batch loading of libraries’ holdings using their existing processes, holdings of the eLGAR libaries' will not be updated either manually (by us) or in batch (by the National Library) until they can be processed using Osmosis (i.e. in July). When our turn comes, a complete refresh will be carried out. From that point on, our holdings will be maintained on the NUC at regular agreed intervals, such as monthly or quarterly.

The records that were reported last year included:
· Book NF and graphic novels in English pre & post-June 2005
· ACL heritage records (books only)– fiction & non-fiction where identified with a 583 note
· Foreign language fiction (post-2005),
· Foreign language non- fiction (post-2005),

Further information about the OSMOSIS Project has been posted on the National Library website http://www.natlib.govt.nz/about-us/current-initiatives/osmosis-pilot. It includes brief pilot information, a timeline and links to related websites.
-- article supplied by Sarah Menzies, Cataloguer, North Shore Libraries