Add LC approved fields to Cataloging more quickly
Catalogers have been waiting since January 2020 for MARC field 532 - Accessibility Note to be included in the MARC bibliographic validation table. This MARC change was approved by LC in 2018 and has been showing up in AV records ever since. Catalogers see a "not defined" error message when saving a record which includes an unvalidated field.
Currently we may only add a local MARC tac to the validation table (eg 9XX, X9X or XX9). Otherwise, it must wait for the LC MARC bibliographic update to be implemented by Polaris development in a new Polaris version. We now hear that the 532 field was added in MARC Update Number 37 (December 2023) and is included in Polaris version 7.7, released at the end of October 2024. That's nearly 6 years since LC approval.
We'd like for LC changes to be added to the cataloging environment more quickly.
Ruth Vargas
shared this idea
We rely on the MARC updates from LC to notify us of changes to the standard that need to be incorporated into the code. I can't speak to why LC approved this particular example in 2018 but didn't include it officially until 2023.
But I can say that because all of our MARC validation rules are stored in the database, it's possible for you to get patches of the latest MARC updates at any time. After seeing this request, we setup a process with our Support team to ensure they know the location of the latest MARC update scripts and can apply them to your server on request.
We process MARC updates at the start of each Polaris release, and you do not need to wait for the release to be GA to receive a patch for those updates. For example, we currently have patches available for Updates 39 & 40, despite the fact they will not be officially released with Polaris until 8.0.