Minutes of the Best Seller List Subcommittee Meeting
Held on Tuesday August 3, 2004 at Warwick Public Library at 9:30 a.m.

Present: Karen McGrath (AUB); Patience Bliss (CLAN); Hsianghui Liu-Spencer (CLAN); Paul Holliday (CRA); Brenda Fecteau (COV); John Carney (EPL); Paul Arsenault (PAW); Peter Bennett (PRO); Cindy St. Amour (PRO); Susan Dunn (WAR); Susan Lepore (WAR); Kristin Smith (WAR).

Note Well: Since Chair Doug Swiszcz was not in attendance due to an eleventh-hour personal matter, these minutes were gleaned from conversations that Doug had with some of the people who attended the meeting.

Two alternative methods were discussed as a way of creating/maintaining the Bestseller List function in Horizon:

1. Create "hot links" from your individual library's website, that would bring the user to the bibliographic records in question. Apparently, Providence Public Library has done this, and it has worked. Peter Bennett will contact the appropriate staff at PRO for a procedure on how this may be done.
2. Add 449 tags to MARC records in Horizon. This is the current way that the old Dynix "Bestseller List" feature was implemented in HIP as a "work around." Such a tag is an authority-controlled tag, and as such requires precision/consistency in the way that it is entered into the system. It was recommended that each library precede the name of each one of its Bestseller List authorities with its 3-letter CLAN code (e.g., all of Barrington's lists should begin with BAR…)

For individual libraries to add these 449 tags to MARC records will require Peter to work with libraries in determining which Horizon logins will have sufficient security/author-ization to access MARC records. Clearly the ability to add to/alter MARC records is not something that every single CLAN staff person should be able to do.

This "work around" method of handling the lists makes it difficult for libraries that add 449 tags to MARC records to remove the tags from bib records for titles that they sub- sequently delete. Peter said that he would be willing to write an SQL query to retrieve such records to help libraries in this matter.

The question arose as to how "generic" lists such as the New York Times Bestseller Lists would be created/maintained. Would an individual library be willing to take on this responsibility on a weekly basis so that other libraries would not have to worry about this?

Because a bib record with many 449 tags can look "cluttered" to Horizon users, Peter could make a "mapping" change so that such tags do not display on the Horizon Staff PAC's. (If I am not mistaken, they do not currently display in HIP).

The subcommittee was asked to prepare some procedures that libraries could follow to add or delete the 449 tag from MARC records, to be presented before the entire Database Management Committee when it meets on Monday, August 30th at WAR at 9:30 a.m.

Respectfully Submitted,
B. Douglas Swiszcz, Chair