Quick query to offices using CALM, if I may - we need to make some quick
decisions on this ourselves.
We've started cataloguing using Management Group/Fonds/Sub-fonds... etc, but
have put the only collection type the system allows at Fonds level. This
means that whenever the tree is shown, everything from that particular
management group is seen - which can sometimes be useful and can sometimes
be really irritating. It also means that when the tree is refreshed it takes
at least a minute for CALM to work through the entire Management Group,
which is a distinct waste of time. There is also some suspicion, as yet
unproven, that this may lead to trouble when the mail merge and some other
facilities are brought into play. An alternative approach would be to change
the collection type level to Management Group & Fonds as one entity (thus
not P/123 but P123) which would then become the level which was revealed by
the tree and refreshed accordingly, thus saving a lot of screen space and
speeding things up.
What worries us is that finding the next available number for cataloguing in
any Management Group might become a problem. We thought it could be done by
using the "wild card" (P*) and telling the system to search only the Fonds
to make sure every appearance of the letter P didn't come up. Have other
offices gone down this road and did it work? Are there any other problems
here we should be watching out for? And most significant, is this the way
other offices are structuring their CALM catalogues - the whole point of
this is to be able to exchange information, after all?
We'd be grateful for replies off list.
Carl Boardman
Oxfordshire Record Office
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