Most book vendors provide title information for the items they sell in industry-standard MARC/MicroLIF records; these records usually accompany your order in an email attachment or on CD-ROM. Alexandria can import MARC, MicroLIF, and other tab-delimited formats, including .txt, .tab, .mrc, .mlif, .001, and .dat. Conveniently, Alexandria can read MARC or MicroLIF records directly, saving you the hassle of typing item information directly into the computer. If you are automating a new library, ask your book vendor for MARC or MicroLIF records when you order new items.

Using MARC or MicroLIF can be extremely convenient. For example, if you move library books from one collection to another, you can provide associated title records that the new location can import into its Alexandria database.

The process of taking existing catalog information (usually on catalog cards) and converting the information into a machine-readable format is called retrospective conversion. This process takes time and effort. If you have an existing collection, now is a good time to examine your collection and remove unused and outdated items.

Conversion Methods

There are several methods of converting your data for Alexandria:

• Retrospective Conversion: You can use our retrospective conversion service to create MicroLIF and MARC records for all items in your collection. Before sending us your shelf list for conversion, assign barcode numbers to the items in your collection and record the barcode and other local information on the catalog cards. The MARC records you receive and import into Alexandria will be complete, and you will have no additional data to enter. Our process is the most complete retrospective conversion method available.

• Enter the information directly into Alexandria: This direct approach is more time-consuming but moderately more cost-effective.

• Import item records into Alexandria from an outside source: You can import information using any database program that can create a text file in a tab-delimited format. See Quick Items Import to see what each item import setting does.

Acceptable Import Record Sources

Alexandria correctly imports records from the following sources:

• 1987 MicroLIF
• 1991 MicroLIF
• US MARC Communication & MARC 21
• SunLink, WisCAT
• Laser Cat
• Dynix, Follett
• Canadian MARC
• ...and many more.

Related Links

• Import Tab-Delimited Records
• Import Field Mapping
• Field Mapping: Item Fields by Field Number

Further Reading