I am not sure yet on how this would be implemented best, so I am starting with a description of the use case: Serials are odd things. They can change their names quite frequently, they can divide, merge, and so on. This is usually reflected in using 780/785 linking records for the different "versions" of the serial. A subscription can currently only be linked to one record at a time. So in case of a name change of the serial, what can we do? - We can close the current subscription and start a new one on the record. This way the serial issues will show on the record with the title matching. The holdings will now be divided up on different records. But this might cause issues with your acq orders and will make it really hard to keep history as things are split up over multiple records. - We can change the bibliographic record the subscription is linked to and move all the information to the "latest" version of the serial. This keeps all the issues and subscription information in one spot, but in the OPAC there are no longer any issues showing at the older record. So what could we do? Ideas: - Make it possible to keep track of the biblionumber an issue was created for (there is already an "unused" field in the database). We could use this to control display and show issues on different records, not only the current one. - Make it possible to link the subscription to a current and additional biblionumbers where you want to show your holdings. ... ?
Would it be possible to incorporate parent-child records? This creates the link between the new and the old bibliographic records. I'm not sure how that can be incorporated with subscriptions, but I would expect the active subscription would live with the currently functioning serial record.