What is the CONSER Experiment?
The primary purpose of the CONSER experiment is to gather data to assess our current ability and inability to share pattern data via CONSER records. Selective CONSER and CONSER Enhance libraries will add MARC holdings data, the captions and patterns (field 853) and related holdings (field 863), to bibliographic records for serial titles. This data will represent the current pattern for the principal work; fields for supplements and indexes (854-55/864-65) will not be added due to space limitations in records. To get the project started, CONSER records will be ‘seeded’ with holdings data from several large libraries. As a result of the experiment we hope to learn more about the usefulness of such data and be able to project time and cost savings to libraries. We also hope to learn what the stumbling blocks are to sharing pattern data. These may include different system’s implementation of the MARC Format for Holdings Data (MFHD), inadequacies of the format itself, problems with import a
