Catalog Admins – Best Practices When Cataloging

Here are some best practices and tips for ensuring that your catalogs (and their titles) are as accessible as you need them to be in Edelweiss:

  • Smaller catalogs are faster to open / load. The maximum recommended title count is 5,000, but in general it’s best to strive for catalogs containing fewer than 1,000 titles to avoid long load times.
  • Changing a catalog’s Status to Archived but leaving its Visibility set to All Readers will actually keep all of the titles in it visible in Edelweiss Search and Filter results while removing access to the catalog itself. Some publishers use this setting to maintain an available backlist catalog that may exceed our recommended title count, as their intention is not to make the catalog available/accessible, but to make all the titles within it searchable and filterable throughout Edelweiss.
  • Keep in mind that Edelweiss users, as well as your reps, will be able to sort and filter each catalog by different metadata elements and other attributes. With this, feel free to create distinct catalogs for specific imprints, categories, markets, etc.
  • To help your sales reps and accounts keep track of their work each season, it’s recommended that you create “Omnibus” catalogs that contain all titles for a given season. Please feel free to create separate catalogs for your various imprints or subjects, too, but remember that an Omnibus catalog will help your accounts be sure they aren’t missing anything.
  • You do not need to update the metadata for a title in every catalog. Simply update the data for an ISBN in one catalog, or post an ONIX, ancillary, or Treeline_Biblio feed, per your standard title update process, and all instances of that title/ISBN will be updated in Edelweiss!
  • If you are unable to find a catalog or an entire catalog sub-folder where you expect them to be in Edelweiss, it’s most likely because there is no catalog in one of the folders higher up in that folder “tree.” To remedy this, always ensure that every catalog folder contains at least one catalog.  This is especially critical for your default Featured Catalogs root folder.