Saving and Naming MODS and modsCollection Records

The MODS records available from the LC and other sources can be for either individual volumes or for multi-volume series (as with the bibliographic record for Aelian found here). This page presents an overview of how and where to save initial MODS records once they have either been downloaded or created from the template.

Creating MODS Records for Single-Volume Editions

MODS records for single volumes that contain works by only one author are currently being saved in the mods folder in catalog_pending under individual author name folders. The file names don't need to follow any particular convention as the ultimate file name once the record is ingested into catalog_data will be created automatically and be based on either the manually created or automatically generated CTS-URN.

Creating MODS Records for Multi-Volume Editions

In the case of multi-volume MODS editions, individual MODS records are created for each separate volume and then are saved as a modsCollection file, as the goal has been to create bibliographic records for each volume that contain individual work level information with page numbers and links to online manifestations. The inclusion of all MODS files for each volume into one modsCollection file for an entire edition is a recent development. For an example of a modsCollection record, please go here.

This process has been initiated due to the fact that the long-standing practice of the creation of MODS records for each digitized volume in an edition without an easy automatic way to concatenate or link them has led to an extremely high volume of CTS-URNs (especially with authors such as Thucydides and Livy, whose works tends to be published in large multiple volume editions), where ideally one CTS-URN should stand for only one edition.

There is ongoing work to consolidate the large number of multi-volume editions into a single modsCollection file, assigning the same CTS-URN to each MODS file and identifying them all through use of a top level ID attribute numerically, such as mods1, mods2, etc. All modsCollection files that are created are currently saved under the name of the author in catalog_pending.

Creating MODS records for Composite Works

MODS records for composite works (single or multi-volume editions that contain several works by different authors such as the Anthologia Graeca of Poetae Latini Minores) are currently being saved in the Composite Works folder in catalog_pending.

After saving the files, the next step is to enhance the MODS records with general information before beginning more in-depth cataloging.