RECORD-BY-RECORD MODE

This page describes 'Record-by-record' or Validation mode in MARC Report. When a file is opened in this mode, no changes can be made to the records.

NOTE: All features available in Record-By-Record mode are also available in Edit mode.

In Record-by-Record mode, MARC report displays a tagged MARC record in its main window, and messages about any problems in the record in the two smaller windows on the right.

BRIEF MESSAGES

The top right window contains 'Brief Messages', which automatically display for each problem in a record. This window helps you quickly grasp all of the problems in the current record (and if there are no problems in the record, a beautiful graphic will display).

Brief Messages usually consist of a MARC Tag, followed by a dash, followed by the occurrence number of the tag in the MARC record, followed by a 'brief' description of the problem found. The messages are sorted in tag order.

These Brief Messages are color-coded to help you quickly group related problems. The legend for the color coding is as follows:

Message	Color	Problem Group           Configuration page

Blue		Invalid data            Validation
Orange		User-defined            Validation
Purple		Obsolete cataloging     Validation
Teal		OCLC--Obsolete/Old      Validation
Green		[reserved]              Validation
Red			Cataloging Checks       Cataloging Checks
Black		Mandatory data          Cataloging Checks

Clicking on a Brief message results in two changes to the display. First, the data element being reported as a problem is automatically selected in the MARC window. If you are in Edit mode, you can begin to correct the problem immediately, otherwise the problem will be highlighted. And if the problem is in a Fixed field, the appropriate Fixed Field form will be displayed. Second, a note corresponding to the message is displayed in the Notes window (see below).

To adjust the font of the Brief messages, click on the caption “Brief Messages” at the top of the panel–a dialog will pop-up where you can customize the font.

NOTES

The bottom right window contains 'Notes'. Unlike the Brief messages, these Notes are not displayed automatically. To display a Note, simply click on a Brief message; the program then displays more complete information about the problem noted by the Brief message. Depending on the type of problem, this 'Note' will either provide a list of correct cataloging values, or provide a more detailed explanation as to why a problem was found during validation.

To adjust the font of the Notes, click on the caption “Notes”–a dialog will pop-up where you can customize the font.

BRIEF MESSAGE PROPERTIES

The following options are available when you right-click on a Brief Message.

Disable Review–for This session only

If you select this option, the review or problem identified by the selected item will not appear in any more Brief Messages during the current session. However, once you exit the session (ie. quit validating the file or select another file to validate), the review in question is re-enabled. To permanently disable a review, see the next topic.

Disable Review–for All sessions

If you select this option, the review or problem identified by the selected item is permanently disabled–it will not appear in any more Brief Messages, even if you exit the program and restart MARC Report. These reviews are entered into a database on your system, which you may edit and organize by clicking the 'Disabled Reviews' button on the Cataloging Check page of the program options.

Important: Almost all reviews (except the 'Blue' validation messages) can also be disabled by setting them to Yes/No in the appropriate table of the Cataloging Check options. This is the preferable way to disable a check for a Mandatory data element, since, in the Mandatory table, there is an option to disable/enable a review according to the record type. But here, using the right-click method, the qualification by record type is not available.

FIND NEXT RECORD (GREEN ARROW)

On the right hand panel, under the list of Brief Messages, there is a box captioned 'Find Next record with:'.

When you click on a brief message, the clicked-upon message is copied down to this box. If you then press the green arrow on the right, the program begins to scan ahead through each record in the file until it reaches either the next record with this message, or the end of file.

This makes it easy to 'walk through a file' stopping only at records with a particular message. When the program reaches a matching record, it stops the scan on that record. To resume the same scan, simply press the Green Arrow again.

To abort a scan, or to clear the Find Next message box, press the red 'X' button on the left.

FIND NEXT OPTIONS

The right-side of the green arrow button contains a dropdown list of options.

Find next record with this message–the default behavior, described above.

Find next record without this message–This option might be useful if you are working through a file where most records have the same problem.

FIND NEXT: SAVE RECORDS TO A FILE

It is also possible to copy all records that match a message in the 'Find Next' box to a separate file. To initiate this function, right-click the green arrow button and select 'Save records with message to a file'.

A new file will be created, and each record that is found during the 'Find Next' scan will be copied to this file. When the scan is stopped, either because there are no more hits or because the red 'X' button was clicked, a dialog will pop up asking for a filename for the results.

NB. The records that are saved still remain in the source file of the edit session (unless you have deleted them there).

By default, this function stops at each record with a matching message; if you want to simply run through the complete file without stopping, select the subsequent option from the green arrow button's context menu: 'Save records with message to a file (NonStop)'

FIND NEXT–NOTES

If the program reaches the end of the file without finding a matching/non-matching message, it pops up a message saying 'Last record in file'.

Sometimes, if the program has been scanning for awhile it may seem like it is not responding to the stop button. If that happens, click it a few more times.

It is possible to manually type a brief message into the 'Find Next' box. However, the entry must exactly match the (normalized) brief message formatting used by the program: a three-digit tag, followed by a colon, one space, and then the exact message. Case does not matter. For fixed fields the format is: a three-digit tag, followed by a forward slash, followed by the element position normalized to two digits, a colon, one space, and the message.

A smarter approach would be to work from a Batch Mode report and copy (then paste) the message(s) you want to find from the batch report into the Find Next box.

PERFECTION

If no Brief Messages are displayed, the right panel will be replaced with a 'perfection' image. To restore the right panel, just click on the picture; this might be necessary to get back to a 'Find Next' search.

NAVIGATION

In Record-By-Record mode, you can navigate back and forth through the MARC file using the five buttons that appear below the Notes window. From left to right, the buttons work as follows:

Go to the First record in the file   |< 
Go to the Previous record             <

Go to the Next record >

Go to the Next record with problems   >  (see 'Red Arrow' below)
Go to the Last record in the file    >|

Find the next record with an error (RED ARROW)

Clicking on the Red Arrow button will cause the program to scan to the next record that contains problems (a problem is defined as any record that causes a 'Brief Message' to appear).

This is useful if you have configured the program so that very few messages appear (by disabling cataloging checks and validation options), and want to quickly skip ahead to the next problem. It might also be useful if you are reviewing your work, say, after you have finished editing a batch of records. However, when navigating a typical file, with several messages for each record, use the Next (>) button instead of the Red Arrow.

To stop the program from seeking ahead to the next problem, right-click the Red Arrow button and select the 'Stop scan' option from the menu that appears.

You can always track the progress of a scan by watching the Record number indicator at the top of the MARC Report window.

OPEN URLs

If the record contains an URL in the subfield $u of a MARC field, you may browse to that url by pressing <F11>; if you are editing a field, you may open a URL by pressing <Ctrl><F11>.

If no navigation begins, it may be because the program does not think the clicked on field contains a URL. MARC Report actually validates the tag/subfield clicked on to see if it has been defined as containing url content. Thus, it will refuse to navigate to a url that is given in a 245 $c, for example.

JUMP

The 'JUMP' box allows you to instantaneously jump to any record in the file by entering the record number and pressing the <Enter> key.

The Jump box will be disabled if you press the 'Cancel' button when the MARC file is first being loaded. At this time, the program scans the file and attempts to build an index of where each MARC record begins. If the index creation process is cancelled, then the program will not be able to jump ahead to a particular record number.