MARC records

I am looking for cataloging suggestions! When we are cataloging we run into a lot of things that we don't have an importable record for. So we do original cataloging. Today one of our volunteers asked, why would you do that when you can just export from the LOC and import it into our catalog. However, it not working so great for me. I get timed out of the LOC catalog before I ever get a change to do anything with it. Please tell me what I am doing wrong!