BBAS is a self-service tool that allows you to compare your holdings against Resources for College Libraries, at your convenience. The process begins with you creating and downloading a file of your holdings from your ILS. In order to maximize your match rates, it is recommended that the file contain all of the following information:
- ISBN
- LCCN
- Title
- Sub-title
- Author
- Uniform Resource Identifier/URL
(only if matching against Resources for College Libraries)
Additionally, if you wish to incorporate any of the content from the data cleansing files, it is integral that the file you send to BBAS contain your ILS’ Unique Record Identifier. The Unique Record Identifier is the identifier that uniquely identifies each record within your ILS. This is generally some sort of sequential number field. Inclusion of your ILS' Unique Record Identifier will allow you to electronically match the results from the data cleansing files back to the content in your ILS. The Unique Record Identifier is not a mandatory field.
BBAS accepts two input file formats: MARC and CSV, with double quotes as text qualifiers. However, we strongly recommend that you use MARC files, as MARC is a standard and introduces fewer issues with the BBAS matching process.
MARC Format Notes: There is no need to extract the fields above from your MARC file. In fact, we recommend sending the MARC file with ALL the MARC fields to avoid introducing formatting errors. The BBAS MARC file reader will pull out the fields that BBAS needs for matching purposes.
CSV Format Notes: It is integral that the Title and Author fields are discrete and do not contain extraneous information. The Title field should only contain the title, and the Author field should only contain the author name. For example, do not include the author in the title field or author birth dates in the author field.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Be sure the ISBN is exported as a text field (as opposed to numeric). ISBNs are not a numeric field; they may have a check digit of X or may have dashes or other text embedded. If you are creating a CSV file it is OK to view the exported file in Excel, but DO NOT save the file in Excel. If you do, Excel will chop off leading zeros from any ISBNs that do not have text data (like dashes, for example). This will cause BBAS to report an inflated number of unmatched records and invalid ISBNs.
