Comment 1 for bug 1161625

Pre-cats were specifically designed to be "fake records" in an attempt to prevent libraries from using the brief records to circulate items long term. Creating a full-fledged MARC record would be contrary to that and I would object to doing so since it would have potential negative impacts to the PINES bibliographic database. Libraries should be sending the item to their cataloging staff on checkin to create that fill-fledged MARC record. I realize that doesn't happen; but, I don't want to create worse database problems trying to solve another issue.

Using pre-cats for ILL items is a work around we developed when our requests for a better way to handle ILLs did not get addressed due to lack of time in early development. The concept of Pre-cats, in my mind at least, were not intended to be used to circulate ILL items; but, we ended up using them in order to get something attached to a patron record for ILLs. PINES would prefer a better way to handle temporary ILL records so that ILL staff (typically reference) can easily maintain them without having to involve cataloging staff to delete the items or giving noncataloging staff permissions that would allow them to edit or create permanent MARC records.

Elaine Hardy
PINES & Collaborative Projects Manager