The impact of vendor records on cataloging and access in academic libraries

The addition of low-quality vendor records to the bibliographic utilities (OCLC and RLIN) has had a significant impact on cataloging and access in academic libraries. Vendor records are brief, non-standard bibliographic records created by booksellers and loaded into the utilities. Because many libraries are choosing to copy these records from the utilities to their local online catalogs without editing or enhancing them, much effort is being duplicated, as individual libraries make the same enhancements locally. Less original cataloging is being conducted in the languages represented by the vendor records, and more upgrading of lower-quality records is now necessary, a change that has affected cataloging workflows, and ultimately access, in academic libraries. Quantitative research is needed on the impact of vendor records.