MARC Report 242: Program changes

• About a dozen new cataloging checks have been added to crosscheck the 300 field with the code from the 008 Illustrations element. In the past, the checking between these two pieces of data was fairly limited; in 242, it will be much more detailed and specific.

• Another dozen or so RDA cataloging checkes were added for a variety of issues in the 264 field.

For specific details on all changes to cataloging checks:
refer to the new wiki section devoted exclusively to that topic.

• A visual caption indicating whether the current record is coded RDA or AACR has been added to the top status bar. This makes it easier to know, at a glance (without tracking down the 040 $e), what type of record it is. This is a temproary caption–once the record is modified, etc., the caption is replaced with 'Record modified', etc.

• Two small changes to the MARC Help (F1) feature re: RDA Toolkit links have been added. When you launch Help in an Edit Session, the program tries to focus on a MARC Help property–Tag, Indicator, Subfield, etc.–that corresponds to the cursor position in the Edit session. If you click the 'R|D|A' button (in Help), you now have the option to navigate to the Subfield level in the Toolkit (the default), or only to the Tag level¹⁾. This new option is found on the Record Display page. Second, while on the MARC Help form, you can now select a different subfield and then navigate to the newly-selected subfield.

• The 'Find' command in the default view was changed slightly–details here

• The 'Find Next' search box (located on the right panel in an edit session, between the Brief messages and the Notes) has been enhanced quite a bit–details here

• An option was added (to the 'Edit Sessions' page of the program Options) that makes it possible to suppress the 'Changes saved' pop-up which appears whenever we press <Alt>S, or the 'Save' button at the bottom of the form. By default, this option, which is named 'Suppress record “Changes saved” pop-up', is not selected. Whether this option is on or off, the top status panel will display a 'Changes saved' caption when <Alt>S is pressed.

• An option similar to the above was also added that makes it possible to suppress the extra 'Results saved' pop-up which appears whenever an Edit session is being closed, and after the results have been successfully saved. By default, this option, which is named 'Suppress session “Results saved” pop-up' is not selected. If this option is selected, a final confirmation message will still appear on the Results form (in heavy bold text), but after two seconds the Edit session results form will automatically close itself.

• An informational message will now pop up in Edit Sessions when the user tries to navigate to the end of the file and the end of the file contains records that were deleted by the user during the session; in the past, the program would simply not advance without giving a reason.

• A minor change was made to the 'Delete Tags' option of MARC Global; this global change task will now support an expression like

  9XX not 949 951

  –which the program interprets as all tags from 900 to 999 with the exception of 949 and 951. Press 'Help' on the 'Delete Tag(s)' form for an explanation of how this may be used.

• Some forms in MARC Global (and MARC Review) have been updated to use a larger display font. The task is a work in progress. The goal is to update these screen displays without breaking any of the global change code, so it may take a few versions to complete.

• A persistent (sticky) option named 'To Desktop' was added to the Concatenate Files form; if checked, the Results File dialog will default to the user's Desktop, hopefully making results easier to find.

• In MARC Analysis, the formatting for the 'Subfield pattern' and 'Subfield length' report sections has been cleaned up and standardized.

• The 'mconcat' utility (command-line concatenation utility) was enhanced to support multiple source files.

• The 'xcat' utility, from the 'command-line utilities' package, did not work in some (many?) cases. The problem has been deemed too difficult and time-consuming to fix–the app has been withdrawn from the distribution.

• Version 242 makes it easier, where necessary, to use a folder other than 'My Documents\MarcReport' (Windows XP) or 'Documents\MarcReport' (Windows 7 and 8) as the default folder for program customizations. The details for setting this up are available on request. The default Windows setup is going to work perfectly well in almost all cases. Use of this feature requires adminstrator access, as one will need to add a small .ini file to the installation folder; when the program starts up and sees this file, it will override the default method (which is to query the windows API) for determining the user's personal folder, and flip over to the path given in the file.

• A new option named 'ALWAYSBACKUPMARCSOURCEFILE' has been added to the Edit Session section of the program options. By default, this option is set to 'Y' (True), and this option is not available on the options form. Setting this option to 'N' (False) may render the automatic session recovery feature inoperable. What this option does is suppress the source backup for large MARC files, so that they will load more quickly, yet unlike 'Record by Record' mode, the records can be modified. Nota Bene: Unlike a typical edit session, only changed records will be saved regardless of your edit session options.

• A new option named 'WORKSHOPPRESENTERMODE' has been added to the Program Automation section of the program options. By default, this option is set to 'N' (False), and this option is not available on the option form. Setting this option to 'Y' (True) simply closes the Brief Message panel when navigating to a record for the first time. It may be useful in a teaching scenario, i.e. to show MARC records to a class (without revealing any error messages) and then quiz them about problems in the records.

• Profiles.

Some customers have attempted to customize the .ini files used by profiles in the expectation that this might similarly extend their MARC Global options. Profiles make it possible for catalogers to use different sets of options for different types of files. We did not foresee extending this functionality to, MARC Global saved reviews, for example. ²⁾

• Cancelling a cataloging check.

This is just a caveat to be sure to thoroughly test your results when permanently cancelling a cataloging check (especially in a production environment). In some cases it is possible that cancelling a cataloging check (whether using the Cancelled Messages feature, or by customizing the Cataloging Check Sets) will create a situation where the code for a related cataloging check becomes unreachable. We are in the process of reviewing the code for these situations³⁾ and hope to have that complete by the next version (243).