Title search - index the 245 field on its own
My library catalogs most new material according to the international cataloging standard, Resource Description and Access (RDA). One requirement of RDA is that each work is given a unique access point. When cataloging a new work, our catalogers must search our database to determine if their 245 field value (subfields a, n, p) is unique. This is impossible for them to do with the out-of-the-box search fields in Alma when their title is only one or two words long because the Title field searches 38 MARC fields and over 100 subfields. In our database, a basic title search of the word "proceedings" returns almost 43,000 records. An advanced "title equals" search of "proceedings" still returns almost 1400 titles, and many of those records do not have a 245 field with a $a value of Proceedings. It would be nice if this capability existed in Alma for all users.
Determining title uniqueness isn't easily solved using Analytics. The Title (Normalized) field includes the 245 $b which isn't used in determining title uniqueness. We created an advanced formula that normalized all text, gets rid of non-filing text, and packs spaces in the 245 field, but it takes about 5 minutes to return results. I think this problem would be solved in the 245 field was indexed by itself in Alma.
Alvin Stockdale
shared this idea
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Beverly D. Hills, MSLS (Part-time)
commented
It would be nice if all searches could be qualified by the field. Notis used to allow that by simply addind .245. to the search. But in the meantime, we catalogers would really like to search the title proper without other fields.