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Locally Produced Titles

While NLS provides the majority of the Talking Books collection, many libraries supplement this with locally recorded books and magazines. You've put a lot of time and resources into these titles, so of course you want to make sure these can get to your patrons, or even to share them with the other network libraries! But, as with everything else, the new Duplication service model and January's major server failure posed some disruptions to this. Let's take a look at where everything stands now, and where we're heading.

Read on for:

  • DBCs available on BARD
  • SHELF Titles
  • Other Local Titles (Including Serials!)

Hopefully this will help answer your questions about making Locally Produced Titles available to your patrons and to the network!

DBCs available on BARD -

Locally produced books that have been through NLS' process and are avaible on BARD are fully supported for Duplication on Demand with any hardware setup (Gutenberg, Scribe, or traditional PCC). All you need are the BibRecs--any local storage using R-sync or any Duplication hardware can receive the files via NLS, and KLAS' automatic eDoc generation will make sure that aspect is in place. If you do not yet include DBCs in your regular MARC loads, and are moving to duplication soon, contact Customer Support to get them added in!

SHELF Titles -

The SHELF Project was created to support the sharing of locally produced titles before NLS provided the option to submit them to BARD, and is still in use. Libraries may chose to share titles via SHELF if they do not meet all of NLS' criteria, or if they have not yet been submitted (such as when a library has a large back-log of local titles). Additionally, SHELF supports serial titles such as magazines.

Unfortunately, SHELF was hit hard by the loss of our SAN server and back-up. Nothing was lost and support for downloading the existing Shelf Titles is still in place! However, the ability to upload new files to our new server is still a work in progress.

As part of this work, the database used to host SHELF has been upgraded from KLAS 7.5 to 7.7--requiring all of the SHELF-specific functionalities to be imported to the 7.7 baseline. While doing this, our developers are actively working on some long wait-listed improvements.

The ability to upload new titles to this new SHELF database and for SHELF to then distribute the MARC records and eDocs for those titles to the other SHELF libraries is still in process, but we expect it to be finished soon. When these are available again, they should be easier and better than ever! Here's how we expect it to work:

  • File uploads will still use an FTP client, now directed to books.klas.com (just like other local titles for Scribe).
  • The SHELF database will create BibRecs using the originating Library ID and original KLAS ID (E.g. UCSC-VDB0002). The originating Library ID, original KLAS ID, and SHLEF's new KLAS ID are kept in the 901 tag which gets propagated out to libraries.
    Serial titles will actually use serial records, rather than kludged monograph records.
  • The BibRec Import/Export procedure is simplified to be more purely based on the MARC. There is no separate XML structure passed around for BibRec information or eDoc information.
  • Edocs in the recieving libraries are created using the 856 tag information in the MARC data, making the titles downloadable over the WebOPAC.

Finally, once all of this is in place, SHELF titles will be fully supported for duplication via Scribe! Duplication will also be possible on Gutenberg or traditional PCC, but you may need to follow the procedures in the next section to make the files available to your duplication hardware and to generate eDocs that are valid for that system.

Again, all of this is still in the works, but watch the Release Lists and the Friday Wrap-up emails because it should be coming soon. I will also be making more specific how-to information available when the workflows are finalized and available.

Other Local Titles -

To Duplicate any title, you need three pieces: a BibRec, a file, and an eDoc that connects the two. To Duplicate local titles that are not availble on BARD, you will need to make the file available to your duplication hardware another way.

For Scribe: You may use your own local storage device (as with traditional PCC), but the Scribe Mini has it's own internal storage which makes this unnecessary. To add local tiles to your Scribe unit(s), you can upload the files to the centralized storage depository (books.klas.com) using any FTP Client. Shelf Titles will automatically be available, no extra upload needed. Serials are also fully supported!

In the future, we hope to support uploading local titles through KLAS itself rather than needing an FTP Client, but in the meantime, follow these instructions to upload local Titles to your Scribe:

For Gutenberg: It is also possible to duplicate local titles on Gutenberg, but please contact NLS for instructions on uploading the files. Support for local Serials on Gutenberg is in-process--we are just waiting on some assistance from NLS for final testing. 

For Traditional PCC: Because traditional PCC setups use a variety of storage solutions, it is hard to provide general instructions. However, most solutions allow you to connect to your local storage and add files via the network. Serials should work with traditional PCC. However, bear in mind that all local issues would need to be re-uploaded on a Scribe or Gutenberg once you transition. As such, we recommend you wait for SHELF to be available or for your choice of duplication hardware to arrive.

For Any: With any of these systems, once the files are in the right location and you have a matching BibRec, KLAS will create the eDocs overnight. Full instructions for using local Serials with duplication (currently available for Scribe and PCC, available soon for Gutenberg) are available:

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