When I was installing Follett Destiny 9.8 I was asked for our MARC Organization Code. I dutifully typed it in and didn’t think much about it. It wasn’t until I went to PaLA this last week that I realized what that is for.

If we were to be changing OCLC MARC records this organization code would be appended to the record to show that we were the ones who made the change. But since we are not an OCLC Library this does not happen. As it is we download most of our MARC records from AlliancePlus, a service provided by Follett (that is when the kids are not playing games on the internet and killing my bandwidth, but that’s another post that will be forthcoming).

Regardless of that, I wanted to see what the Library of Congress had for our listing. So I logged on to the directory and couldn’t find our school.  So I searched for just “Taiwan” and found the directory had listed our “official” name and not the others and our address from 5 years ago before we moved to the new campus.  Incorrect information?  This Librarian couldn’t stand it.  I dutifully submitted a request to update it and in doing so discovered I could request “variant names” including the Chinese Pinyin.

Now when you search for my school you can find a correct listing.  Thanks to the Network Development and MARC Standards Office at the Library of Congress.