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What are unresolved records?

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Unresolved records are records that do not match a record in WorldCat after going through data sync processing in Collection Manager. They are added to WorldCat Staging, a partially indexed area of WorldCat. Unresolved records can only be found using the OCLC number provided in the Unresolved Cross Reference file.

A record may be considered unresolved due to the following reasons:

  • The record did not match a WorldCat record because of:
    • Legitimate differences in cataloging practice.
    • Data errors that prevented bibliographic matching algorithms from identifying the record as matching a WorldCat record.
    • A matching record does not already exist in WorldCat.
  • The record was added to WorldCat Staging because of:
    • MARC validation errors (e.g., non-repeatable fields are repeated, indicator values are missing or erroneous, or other validation errors occurred).
    • Sparse or incomplete records: Records that do not have enough data to be considered even a brief bibliographic record. Often, these are order records that were not deselected during the evaluation process.
    • No matching record was identified and the collection was set to limit added records to WorldCat Staging.

See Unresolved records for information on how to manage unresolved bibliographic records.