SUMMARY OF RESPONSES: cataloging electronic serials/Serials solutions

[Joan Pirie <jopirie@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I was asked to summarize for the list; since the issues are so complex and 
so site-specific, I've taken the liberty of just copying e-mails from the 
IUG list, AUTOCAT, and the Serials Solutions list.

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We are working on the similar changes in our policy regarding cataloging 
electronic journals. Since we are a consortium of academic and one state 
library, we have separate record approach - one aggregator-neutral record 
for all electronic versions with info about aggregators in check-in records 
and another record for print journal.  According to our old policy, I 
created several 866 in check-in record - one for each aggregator (e.g., 
Muse, JSTOR, EBSCO, etc.) Recently, however, we purchased TDnet program 
which is very similar to Serials Solutions. It gave us an opportunity to 
revise our policy and provide one TDnet URL in check-in record that will 
lead the user to the journal home page within TDnet where all aggregators 
and databases from which the journal is available are listed. We just tried 
several journals from JSTOR music collection and it looks much better than 
the check-in records with multi 866s. I am not sure that you will be able 
to access the journals since access require ID, but you may take a look:

1. 19th-century music ISSN 1533-8606 b25527356
<http://www.consuls.org/record=b2552735>http://www.consuls.org/record=b2552735

2. American music  b26178229
<http://www.consuls.org/record=2617822>http://www.consuls.org/record=2617822

3. Black music research journal b26178187
  <http://www.consuls.org/record=2617818>http://www.consuls.org/record=2617818

Please, e-mail me if you have any further questions.

Yelena Mushkatina
Assistant Librarian/Cataloger
Central Connecticut State University
1615 Stanley Street
New Britain, CT 06050
(860) 832-2079
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We have some similarities to Vassar's in that we put multiple formats on 
one bib record and catalog non-aggregator ejournal titles.

However, we also load Serials Solutions data for aggregator titles into the 
catalog.  In this case we convert the comma-delimited SS files into MARC, 
enrich them with additional headings, and dedupe them.  One of my 
colleagues made a presentation at the last IUG about this process.

  <http://innopacusers.org/iug2003/programs/E3/index.html>http://innopacusers.org/iug2003/programs/E3/index.html

What this does is to put records for virtually all of our ejournals into 
the OPAC.  We think that it is sustainable even in these times of budget 
constraints because it does not take more than a couple of hours of staff 
time every other month to load the aggregator data.

However, we are also in the process of implementing an OpenURL link server 
(in our case, SFX) because, as good as the catalog is as a source of 
ejournal data, it cannot provide article level access and that is what our 
users should have, especially from indexes and databases.  We are still in 
the early stages of SFX implementation and have not yet decided what the 
long term effect will be on the catalog, but for the time being we are 
maintaining it as we have for the past year.

Jerry V. Caswell
Head of Library Information Technologies
University of Northern Iowa Library
1227 West 27th Street
Cedar Falls, IA  50613-3675
Phone: (319) 273-7059  FAX: (319) 273-7182
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Though we debated extensively and not everyone agrees on staff as to the 
approach (because it is not perfect) -
We attacked it in another direction.

We extracted and created a single summary holdings record record (with only 
dates no locations) for all of our print titles and loaded them into SS.

With this approach we only have to update new print additions, titles 
closed, or removed from the collection.  A link to the record in our III 
system shows details.

We removed the Journal title search from the OPAC screens and set it so it 
goes to SS instead.

The upsides are

-that maintenance of the print holdings is minimal.
- when SS makes changes - they take effect immediately (or the following day)
- there is one place to look for print and electronic
- you can ISSN search for linking (what SS calls Journal Linker)
- you get all titles reported in the SS subject listings.
- no load tables or mucking with the catalog records

The downsides are

- You cannot put variant print titles on a single record without creating 
duplicate entries.
- only a single ISSN  (print/ electronic) works for linking.
- you don't get all the other MARC fields for searching/displaying/linking.

Anyway, with our small staff - it was about the best we could come up with.


<http://www.lemoyne.edu/library/>http://www.lemoyne.edu/library/

Select SIMON and then journal title search.

If you have questions or I have been unclear - feel free to contact me.

/************************************************************/
Michael Poulin
Librarian for the Sciences and Electronic Resources
Noreen Reale Falcone Library
Le Moyne College
1429 Salt Springs Road
Syracuse, NY 13214

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We, too, use one record. We purchased Innovative's E-journal holdings 
update and I like it a lot. Serial Solutions will send you the file you 
need in the proper format. Setting up your records takes some work, but 
once they are set up, the update, which come every 2 months,  takes a 
relatively short time. After I run the update, I then run a list of all the 
records that weren't updated and can check for problems and find those 
journals that have been dropped from the aggregators. Check out our 
catalog(<http://library.law.suffolk.edu/search/>http://library.law.suffolk.edu/search/) 
for something like "Callaloo" or "Journal of Finance"  to see what it looks 
like. If you decide to implement I can guide you through some of the 
intricacies that are, shall we say "insufficiently explained" in the manual.

[from 2nd message]:

Originally we had separate checkin records for each database and different 
locations for each database and updated these manually when there was 
time...it didn't happen very often. I created a new location "fulltext 
through databases". Then made a list of all our journals that had checkin 
records with holdings for databases attached. I went through each record 
and removed all the checkins for periodicals found in databases except for 
one, and changed the location on that one to the new location for "fulltext 
through databases". I'm afraid even though we have Millennium, I use the 
telnet version for most of what I do and I was able to program function 
keys to make a lot of the  changes or delete a record with one keystroke. I 
,also, added the prefix 'full text" to the "library has" field.  Later on I 
went in and removed 856 links when they were duplicated by links from the 
checkin records.  I didn't mention that "E journal holdings update" is an 
add-on to Millennium Serials. When you do the update I create a list of the 
checkin  records that have the location "fulltext through databases" then 
select the serials solutions text file that I have transferred to notepad 
from the e-mail they send me. The program replaces the old information with 
the new and tells you which records have been updated and which have 
not.  I do about a third of the file at a time, so if I screw up, which has 
happened, I haven't screwed up the whole database!

Becky Fulweiler
Sawyer Library, Suffolk University
Phone: 617 573-8541
Fax: 617 573-8756
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We also use one record; we also have cataloged all our subscribed 
electronic journals, and we also want to keep one record. This is the 
process we are in the middle of implementing (I won't know if it works for 
a while yet):

1.We have loaded serials solutions MARC records for all our electronic 
access titles. (we just did this early this month). We used our standard 
load table
2. We are getting a new load table from III which will (I hope) use serials 
solutions 035 field for an overlay point and only over lay the 865 fields 
on records already in the system.
3. We will then manually move the 865s from the serials solutions records 
onto the bib record for the paper title and add the 035 field.
4. We have requested our Serials Solutions MARC records to be issued in 3 
files  - New, Deletes and Updates.  We will need to check the news against 
our paper titles and merge them; and manually remove the deletes, but for 
the updates the 865 will overlay on all records.

This should give us a complete list of our holdings; it will also give us 
one record per title; what it will not give us is bibliographic updates to 
records.  That is if a title changes or closes, we will not get the 
corrected MARC record from Serials Solutions..

I will be happy to let you know if this works.  I am scheduled to work on 
the load table with III next month. Then I will merge a few paper 
electronic titles to see what happens when we load the next batch of 
Serials Solutions MARC records.  If that works we will start adding their 
URLs to the bib records for our paper titles.

Helen Dungan
Cataloging Librarian
Lafayette College                            E-mail: dunganh@xxxxxxxxxx
710 Sullivan Road                           Phone: (610) 330-5160
Easton, Pa. 18042-1797                Fax: (610) 252-0370

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We have struggled with many of the issues you describe. I'll try to explain 
what our current practice is, and how we got there, but I have to add the 
caveat that our procedures will be changing over the next year or so, 
because we are dropping Serials Solutions and adopting SFX/MetaLib.

We currently subscribe to the Serials Solutions list, but we do not get 
MARC records from them. We manually catalog electronic serials that have 
full text available from a website hosted by the publisher (ScienceDirect, 
Blackwell, etc), a 3rd party vendor (Ingenta or Ebsco EJS), or a backfile 
service (JSTOR). Typically, these sites provide a journal homepage with 
browseable contents so that you can see all of the available issues for a 
given serial. We do *not* catalog titles *within* and aggregator database.

When we catalog a title, we create a holdings record for each "instance" of 
that title. For example, "Ethnohistory" is available from both Muse and 
JSTOR. The Muse instance gets a holdings record, and the JSTOR instance 
gets a holdings record. We create separate holdings because the coverage of 
each instance can't be predicted. The same content may be available on each 
website, or it may be broken up chronologically, as is usually the case 
with JSTOR. Creating individual holdings records also provide the 
opportunity to attach purchase orders to each record (we use Endeavor 
Voyager), which helps us to manage and keep track of financial information 
for acquisistions.

In the holdings record, we create a locally developed URL that server as a 
persistent URL with a unique identifier, based on the holding record 
number. Since Ethnohistory is available from two vendors, it has two 
holdings records, each with a URL. The resulting 856s would look like this:

Holdings #2272890
856 40
<http://library.tamu.edu/electronicresources/Copyright.asp?AM_DB_MFHD=2272890>http://library.tamu.edu/electronicresources/Copyright.asp?AM_DB_MFHD=2272890
|z Connect to Ethnohistory through Muse.

Holdings #2397050
856 40
<http://library.tamu.edu/electronicresources/Copyright.asp?AM_DB_MFHD=2397050>http://library.tamu.edu/electronicresources/Copyright.asp?AM_DB_MFHD=2397050
|z Connect to Ethnohistory through JSTOR.

Clicking on the URL links it to our PURL/proxy server. We populate the 
server with the SerialsSolutions data. After I catalog a resource, I go 
into a table (based on our SerialsSolutions feed) and add the holdings # 
(2272890) to the appropriate entry (Ethnohistory from Muse). When a patron 
clicks on the URL, our system uses the holdings number to find the 
applicable SerialsSolutions record, lookup the static URL, and take the 
patron to the appropriate web page.

We are experimenting with a different system in which the URL would be an 
openURL generated on the fly, and would be compatible with SFX. From the 
patron's point of view, there would be an SFX button with text along the 
lines of "Click here to access the full text or request document delivery 
services." Right now we are having problems with the way Voyager generates 
openURLs. But as we move away from SerialsSolutions, we will have to find a 
new method of managing links.

As for the idea of linking based on the ISSN, I think that is a feasible 
option. No one standard has emerged as the best for managing links in the 
catalog, as far as I can tell. I hope this is informative, and wish you the 
best of luck in implementing your system. Please feel free to contact me if 
you have any questions.

Brian Surratt
Electronic Resources Cataloger
Texas A&M University Libraries
bsurratt@xxxxxxxxxx
(979) 845-5454



Joan Pirie
Head of Cataloging
Vassar College Libraries
Box 295
124 Raymond Ave.
Poughkeepsie, NY 12604-0295
845-437-5778
845-437-7128 (fax)