There are many serial records in MERLIN for which we catalog the volumes separately as monographs. The serial records can be confusing, because they don’t have an item records for each volume. This is especially a problem when someone wants to request a volume via MERLIN.
Catalog Department staff have been working with others to come up with something better. Below is a proposal. It involves improved notes, plus a link that executes a title search of the series which retrieves the monograph records.
Example:
Loc MU ANNEX & MU ELLIS QH7 .S78
Lib Has 1-162,164-168,170-185
Note Volumes have unique titles and MERLIN records. To determine the title and location of a
specific volume click on “MU” Search for individual volumes.”
Link to web version MU: Search for individual volumes
See this in MERLIN: http://207.160.154.35/record=b1320314
Please let me know what you think about this proposal. We hope to start implementing this in MERLIN starting in July. For a comparison see the examples below which show our current practices.
Current practices:
Example: Below is the information included in MERLIN when volumes have separate classification numbers.
Loc MU GEOLOGY SEARCH BY SPECIFIC TITLE
Lib Has no.38(1997)-43(2005), 45(2007)-
Latest Received: 2007 no.45
See this in MERLIN: http://207.160.154.35/record=b4208482
When volumes are assigned the same classification number, we don’t provide any clues about the lack of item records.
Example:
Loc MU ELLIS GN1 .S54
Lib Has no.1-32, 34-44,46-47-
Latest Received: v.47
See this in MERLIN: http://207.160.154.35/record=b1337406
–Felicity Dykas