Display of Notes
We have a question about the way we handle notes that we would like your help with – how notes display in Prism 3.
We’ve been looking at this because a few customers have asked for more of their notes to display on the item detail pages in Prism 3. At the moment only one note from the marc record is shown and it’s not predictable which one will be shown.
The reason notes don’t work well today is that the underlying data model for notes was designed for indexing and didn’t consider the needs of displaying notes properly. All notes from 500, 501, 502, 504, 505, 508, 511, 518, 520, 521, 533, 534, 536, 538, 545 and 550 are kept and indexed for search, unfortunately they are not kept in distinct properties and the order in which they were present in the marc record is not preserved.
In the Semantic Data Model work we have already designed new data structures for notes that will keep them distinct and maintain the ordering from the catalogue record – so longer term we will be addressing this issue much more cleanly.
What some of you have asked us to do in the meantime is to display all of the notes we have stored for indexing. This would display more of your valuable information to the user, helping them understand more about the item they’re looking at. On the downside, because of the limits of the data model, the order in which the notes are displayed would not be predictable and some notes such as the Summary, Contents and Performers notes may be repeated in the display.
We’ll be discussing this at the development webinar today and would very much like to hear your views on what is most preferable – more data, but with some repetition, or showing only one note as we do today. You can add a comment to this post, email terry.willan@talis.com, or bring your views to the development webinar.
To help you see what we mean we’ve put together some example screens showing how the notes would display. Click on each screenshot for a larger view of it.
- Catch-22 (with publication history, summary and indexes notes)
- Songs of Scotland (with contents and performers notes
- Language proof and logic (with contents, accompanying material, indexes and system requirements notes)
January 19th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
Terry – somewhat disappointed in this. Somewhat of a Hobson’s choice. Note being able to tailor the notes for us is problematic in the least. And you can probably guess what I’m going to ask – what is ‘longer term’ for this issue??
January 19th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Jo, True this is not the full solution you want, but it is proposing an incremental improvement, albeit with some remaining issues, while we work on the deeper aspects. The plans for Talis Prism 3 are outlined on the Roadmap and we report and discuss progress regularly in the Talis Prism 3 Development Update Webinars, the next of which are about to start this afternoon.
January 19th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Does this mean that other 500 fields not mentioned above will display in Prism?
e.g. local notes such as 590?
We have a large number of older records with a 590 field containing important information relating to format.
I raised this as a call back in November 2008, and was informed that a PER had been raised.
January 19th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
Christine, The only notes under discussion in this proposal are those listed above. We are aware of other notes data, including local notes such as 590, and we are addressing the need for these in the Semantic Data Model.
January 19th, 2010 at 5:00 pm
In today’s webinar Rob asked for a ‘vote’ of leaving the display as it is now, i.e. just one note – not necessarily the first in the MARC record, or all notes, i.e. accepting/suffering some repetition. We would certainly prefer the latter (and keep on hoping for some more flexibility).
January 19th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
I agree with Esther – I’d rather see them all. However, two questions – the really horrid display is the one above with performers. Is it the case that the display not only fails to distinguish order of notes, but also fragments them? (Hard to know without seeing how the data is held in the underlying record).
Secondly, the whole business of timescale – I know you’re reviewing the road map in the very near future, and I understand that Prism 3 is a work in progress – but it is awfully difficult to make plans to go live with Prism 3 if we just don’t know when we will have the product that we need!
Finally, I’d add my plea to Christine’s for “other” notes to display – item descriptive notes, especially.
January 19th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
Thanks Esther and heather for your votes.
Notes are not fragmented, if you mean fragmenting the data in one field. Each occurrence of each note field (to think in MARC terms) would display on a new line with the Notes label. So in that example (and they are all real cases) each of the works on the CD have been listed in a separate occurrence of 505. Normally the data would be entered in one occurrence of 505, in which case there would just be one Note for it.
This is an extreme example (as they all are to some extent) to make clear the side effects. I think there will be very many entries in most catalogues where displaying all notes gives significant benefit with no side effects.
January 20th, 2010 at 9:46 am
What I don’t understand is how a data model could be conceived and developed without taking into account the proper display of notes and other bibliographic data. I hope Talis will be able to resolve bib. display issues sooner rather than later.
January 20th, 2010 at 12:03 pm
I would definitely want all notes to display, even if that would lead to some dupplication.
We have local notes indicated by adding #UK-BiUCE at the end (as we were told that Talis would not support the Marc 21 590 field) Will these display in Prism 3?
Jjanet Pryce-Jones
Birmingham City University
January 20th, 2010 at 3:15 pm
Janet – the fields listed in the proposal will display whether or not they contain your subfield $#UK-BiUCE, which acts as the ‘local protect’ marker in your MARC 21 records. It’s not that we don’t support field 590, but, as for any locally defined field, an amendment needs to be made to your local validation rules in Talis Alto to allow the field to be input and edited.
January 20th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
We would also go for all notes displaying, although it is going to lead to some notes being duplicated and is not ideal. One of the problems is that the content in the 520 and 505 can be vast and so duplication will mean a lot of ‘text’ displaying. However I realise that apart from editing the records we can not do anything about this. I look forward to seeing the revised roadmap that was talked about in the webinar yesterday, so that we can give colleagues an idea of when we may be able to have more individual choice about what is appearing in the display.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:00 pm
I’d like to add my voice to those calling for display of all notes, rather than just taking pot luck, even if we must live with duplication for a period. I think it’s important that “all” notes really does mean all, not just those listed. We’d especially like 506 to display as soon as possible, for dates of our embargoed theses.
January 20th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Liz – We are working to allow all other notes beyond those listed, such as 506, to display, as part of the Semantic Data Model development, and each type of note will be individually identified.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Terry – Thanks for the clarification about fragmentation (I was fearing that every time there was a dash in a notes field it displayed on a different line, or something like that).
Hear hear to Sandra and Jo – I understand and rejoice that we are just on the road to a better place (Prism 3 on the road to a Semantic Catalogue, me on the road to retirement ;-)) but we do need the journey to be comfortable in the meantime, which is why we keep going on about needing the same functionality (even if not delivered in the same way) in Prism 3 as we have in Prism 2. Otherwise we are travelling backwards.
Perhaps we all (customers and developers) need to come to the Prism Day in February and dedicate it to a Group Hug.
January 20th, 2010 at 2:59 pm
A consensus is building around going ahead with the proposal. Further comments are still welcome.
Sandra, Jo, Liz, Heather – thanks for clearly articulating your thoughts. As for the Group Hug: be careful what you wish for.
January 21st, 2010 at 11:07 am
Just to add my tuppence-worth..
In the short term I reluctantly vote for all notes rather than just 1. Not ideal but I appreciate that it’s the best on offer right now.
In the longer term – I really hope that the semantic data model work will allow each library to choose which notes fields, and other MARC fields, to display/not display in Prism 3, as each library will undoubtedly have different requirements. Also, I would like all fields to be labelled according to the specific MARC tag label when they display in Prism 3 – simply calling all 5xx fields ‘Notes’ is not very helpful to users. If the wording of the labels were customisable too, that would be wonderful. I appreciate that the data on Prism 3 isn’t stored in MARC format, but as our cataloguers are making the effort to use the correct 5xx fields according to note content, it would be a big step backwards if our future catalogue can’t convey this information to users because it’s being lost when our records go into our Prism 3 tenancy.
Frankly, I’m amazed and somewhat disappointed that Prism 3 has got so far into its life/developemt in this state. Now that we have the tools to potentially make far more use of the content of our MARC records than ever before, it seems that some of the basics that we’ve taken for granted for years have been forgotten about. Yes, we need more intelligent searching, facets, FRBR-isation of records, etc, but we also need clear, configurable displays of records so that we can make sure that the customer sees the information they need. Does that sound reasonable?
January 21st, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Fran – In the longer term, coming out of the Semantic Data Model work, each type of note will be separately identified, making possible the flexibility you describe. The labelling in the display is already customisable and translatable (by us – further development of the Admin Module will allow you to do it).
January 25th, 2010 at 11:51 am
I’d also agree that including all the notes is the better option – on the principle that too much information is better than too little. However I share the concerns above about the bib display in general and am concerned that the “longer term” has no timescale outlined.
February 1st, 2010 at 2:49 pm
Thank you all for your very useful thoughts and feedback. There’s a clear consensus that we should display all the notes, despite the limits around duplication and ordering. We’ll add that to our schedule with a view to it coming through in the next couple of releases.
Thanks
February 4th, 2010 at 10:27 am
Hurrah!
This was me just about to add my thoughts after not having had the chance since the webinar, but it seems it’s all been said. Delighted that we’re taking this step, but will be even happier when we have the individual functionality, and Prism 3 attempts to doff its cap to MARC21 and the hard work that the cataloguers put into standardisation and continuity.
So, do we have a timescale for stage one?
February 24th, 2010 at 7:00 pm
I too hope that we will have the functionality in Prism 3 to decide which notes fields we display.
I also hope that completion of the semantic data model will rectify the current problems of notes display.
I am particularly perturbed by the problems we are having with the Prism 3 display of the 538 MARC field in over 50, 000 of our records.
Each MARC record contains a 538 MARC field (often no other notes field), but this is duplicated in display (both under “Notes” and “System”) – See below:
http://www.isiknowledge.com
Notes:
Via Internet. Password may be required. Click here for details.
System: Via Internet. Password may be required. Click here for details. Powered by Talis Prism
Interestingly, in one of our MARC records where the same messaging has been incorrectly entered in the 500 field instead of the 538 system note field where it belongs, the duplication does not occur in Prism 3 display. (See Euromonitor – S0003805NP).
Is the 538 duplicating into a “Notes” and a “System” note instead of just displaying as one “System note”?
PS. Can we please also have the display of HTML fixed? We only want the wording to display, not HTML!
February 26th, 2010 at 10:34 am
The development work on the display of notes is in progress. At the latest it will be in the release after next. The next release is planned for the first half of March.
Linda, your system notes are another aspect of the duplication in the current data model, which will be rectified in the semantic data model.
It is not feasible to cater for html embedded in the bibliographic data. MARC allows for your data to be managed in a more controlled way, for example field 538 provides for a URI and display text in subfields $u and $i. We’ll contact you separately to find a resolution to this issue.