Bibliographic level and format displays

For years, the request full record display in the NHAIS ILL System has always shown "Book" for Material Bibliographic Level and "None" for Material Format, even for DVDs and CDs.

For new requests (created this week and hereafter), you'll see a slightly different look--and the information displayed should reflect the material requested:

In order to make these fields show useful information, we've added two new fields to the form you see when creating a request: Material Bibliographic Level and Material Format.

The Material Bibliographic Level will automatically reflect the bibliographic level of the record used to create the request; you shouldn't have to change it. Note that the bibliographic level groups many different formats together so, for example, DVDs, Blu-rays, and videocassettes all display as Visual Material while audiobook CDs, audiobook cassettes, and audiobook players will show as Non-musical Sound Recording.

The Material Format field is for text materials and will mostly come into play for large print books. It is not automatically selected; the borrower will need to choose from the drop-down list if applicable. (Getting this field to populate automatically is being considered for development.)

While we're looking at request forms and request full record displays, here's a reminder that "Any Edition is Acceptable" functions as a note to the lender; it has no effect whatsoever on which libraries the request is routed to. The lender list build process depends on finding holdings that match the details in the specific record used to create the request.

Questions? Contact the NHAIS Help Desk via e-mail or phone 603-271-2141.