Use Syndetics Summary when no 520 in Most Recent edition of a format
For rollups Vega defaults to the most recent edition which is often a paperback which has less robust information, as we do very minimal cataloging on those. There is no synopsis on the detailed page. In the old catalog, having no summary for a paperback wasn't a huge deal because the annotations gave you enough information. But in Vega, you get nothing at all unless you click on the ebook.
When there is no 520 data in the most recent edition of a format can we display the summary from Syndetics instead?
Sarah Wenstrup
shared this idea
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Kristine den Boon
commented
This is critical, but so is the Syndetics summary being keyword searchable. Without that, we will have to continue to input our own 520 data as much as possible.
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Sarah Peterson
commented
This is critical for us. Because we have used Syndetics for many years, we don't have many 520 fields, and we would much rather have this information come from Syndetics since they have it readily available. It works well with other discovery platforms, so hopefully, the same would be true here.
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Misty Long
commented
We just switched to Discover and were under the impression that Syndetics Unbound would be even better than Syndetics, which is what we had with BiblioCommons. Now we know that summaries are not included which is very problematic for our customers and staff. We have been cataloging for many years without adding summaries if the record did not have one because we knew Syndetics provided them and we had to save time where we could. Going back to add summaries to thousands of records is just not something we have the capacity to do. We are getting a lot of complaints about missing summaries. I really don't understand why this is not already included for Discover.
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Sarah Peterson
commented
We just switched to Discover and are getting daily complaints about the lack of summaries and other content. We had a lower level of Syndetics subscription with Bibliocommons but much more content, and people really miss it and need it. This should be a top priority. We specifically asked if we would have the same or more functionality, and instead, we have very minimal offerings.
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Sarah Wenstrup
commented
Due to it defaulting to the most recent edition of a given title by default, integration with Syndetics could be used to provide these when none is available from the selected format group.
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Alison Pruntel
commented
We try and replace old records with OCLC when we are repairing or notice, but that's a task that will never be finished. Having summary information would be helpful.
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Margaret Rose O'Keefe
commented
Definitely! We have a lot of older records that don't have summaries, but sometimes Syndetics will have those summaries instead, and in the old PAC, patrons could see those Syndetics summaries. We have Syndetics Unbound in both places, so I'm not sure why we can't see summaries in Vega.
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Lisa Coker
commented
It would be great if the Syndetics summaries were accessible in Vega. In Encore we had Content Café, and clicking on the book cover returned a page like the one below. Patrons (and staff) really miss summaries on future release books we don’t have summary information for.