Brief Records Entered at Circulation

For more information, see Pre-Cats: Guidelines for Adding Brief Title Records to the PINES Database

Sometimes a patron will wish to borrow an item for which no record is found in the PINES database. Rather than tell the person that the item cannot be borrowed, a temporary brief title record can be entered at the circulation desk, and the item can be checked out to the patron. These records are not permanent records and they do not, in fact, appear in the OPAC. The default “home location” is given as CATALOGING. This is meant as a prompt to the circulation staff to send the item to the Cataloging Department when it is returned so it can be fully cataloged. Evergreen deletes these records upon check-in.

If the brief record is not automatically deleted from the database upon check-in or if it predates Evergreen, it is the responsibility of the Cataloging Staff to remove such brief records from the database. They should not be allowed to linger any longer than absolutely necessary.

NOTE: Most libraries handle the circulation of Inter-library Loan items by entering Brief Records for them at the Circulation Desk. In such cases, it should only be necessary when the item is returned, to send to the catalog department the item ID number that was assigned to the ILL item so the brief record can be deleted. It should be noted that any and all additions, deletions or changes to the cataloging database must be handled by a person with a cataloging authorization.