Getting to the bottom of it

My colleagues at the medical library graciously offered to help me with this list of 278 MARC records marked for deletion. We went over a few examples, talked out a few problems, and came up with a plan: we’re splitting up the list and going through title-by-title.

It helps that we’re sitting in the same room. We often collaborate over the phone or on Meebo, but it’s helpful to be able to just talk. Together, we figured out a reasonable plan of attack, and we’ve been able to compare findings as we plug through the list.

The majority of the problems are with ScienceDirect links that were removed from EBSCO’s Title Wizard. We still have access to everything at the ScienceDirect site, but there’s no ScienceDirect Freedom Collection link. I called EBSCO this morning and spoke with one of their representatives. I told him I was planning to send a large list of titles that needed plain old Freedom Collection links added to their Title Wizard options, and he thought that was a fine idea.

Still not sure why this is happening, but we noticed that the titles are mostly old: there aren’t current issues. It might be a publication with access from 1996-1999, rather than “to present”. It might be a previous title. Regardless, there should still be a ScienceDirect link for our patrons: in fact, there are several options but the one we need (which is part of our package) is missing.

Why are these MARC records marked for deletion?

Greetings from Confusionville, Vermont.

A whole bunch of links are set to be deleted from our catalog. Trouble is, we still have access to many them. I don’t know why they’re all marked for deletion. I’m going through the 278-title list one by one and discovering that the individual analysis is complicated and quite time-consuming.

Some are legitimate purges, such as title changes. The rest (so far) are strange.

• titles that EBSCO removed from the ScienceDirect Freedom Collection package list, but that we still have access to (I think EBSCO made a mistake)
• titles that are still checked in the Title Wizard, but are marked for deletion in the batch load (maybe someone un-checked them at the time the list was run, and then re-checked them which is why I can see them now?)

I have no interest in making a habit of reviewing the to-purge list, but there are enough red flags this month that it seems worthwhile to go through them individually. But I am so confused and stuck. And this is no time to be stuck, because this has to be figured out.

SpringerLINK

I received another troubleshooting report that wouldn’t have come up if the custom coverage showed up in the MARC record. In this case, instead of bringing it to EBSCO’s attention, I’m going to resolve it while tackling a larger problem.

This particular 856 (the one lacking coverage dates) is for SpringerLINK. We also have an 856 in this record for SpringerLINK (NERL), which is our consortial subscription. Because the list of titles in the SpringerLINK (NERL) package isn’t up-to-date, we added the SpringerLINK records to compensate for the missing titles.

I’m going to go through and look at all of the SpringerLINK records. If there is a second, SpringerLINK (NERL) record, I’ll remove the SpringerLINK link. The remaining SpringerLINK records will either be

• part of our non-NERL Springer subscription, or
• should be part of the NERL subscription.

It’s a somewhat daunting project, given the number of titles, but it will save me so much time in the end. I’ll have a clear picture of particular titles missing from the NERL list and I’ll avoid a few troubleshooting problems.

Should this custom coverage stick?

A while ago I learned that custom coverage doesn’t stick to E-Journals from EBSCO records (back then they were known as EBSCOhost EJS in the A-to-Z list). This is because EBSCO updates our A-to-Z list nightly and according to their master database, which we customers can’t change.
Sometimes the managed coverage is incorrect. Because EBSCO looks at billing dates instead of available content when determining “coverage,” the managed coverage may be incorrect if:

• there is rolling coverage
• the title changed
• the publisher changed (EBSCO uses a separate record)
• we switched to an inappropriate online subscription and went back to print
• or there’s a plain old error

I’ve gotten used to correcting the publisher’s site coverage using Collection Editor and contacting EBSCO to fix their coverage. It seems like it’s been a while since I did this, and I recently found a contradiction.

The managed coverage for the Canadian Journal of Botany was listed as 1997-present, but the publisher didn’t have content from 1997 online. I wrote to EBSCO and pointed this out, and (without thinking) changed the custom coverage myself. It stuck. For a while. For weeks.

At the same time, I tried changing the custom coverage for our Journal of Geophysical Research titles (an example where, for years, we kept getting switched to online access when we wanted print-only). That didn’t stick for very long. In this case, changing our managed coverage is a little more involved than sending a request to EBSCO, because their records show that we switched to online, but don’t show that we switched back to print only and never had the online access. This year, we took the plunge and went online only, so I need the dates to read 2008-present instead of 2002 or 2005. Our subscription agent is helping to explain the situation, and I hope it will be corrected.

I wrote to EBSCO today, using these examples, to ask whether customers can change custom coverage for EBSCO access.  Whether it should or shouldn’t, there’s definitely a contradiction shown in these two examples.

Statistics updated

March’s statistics were added to the statistics page. There were 19 reports in March, eight of which remain unresolved. A couple of those ongoing issues are familiar titles with new problems. Several problems are similar:

• managed coverage dates don’t appear in the MARC record (Review of Income and Wealth, Journal of Financial Research, Harvard Business Review)
• content doesn’t match what’s available through other resources (Journal of Experimental  Therapeutics and Oncology, Hydrocarbon Processing)

Hydrocarbon Processing

A colleague in reference pointed out that our access to Hydrocarbon Processing in EBSCO’s Academic Search Premier is different from our access in Gale’s General OneFile. She did a great deal of research before she explained the situation to me, discovering further complications such as incorrect publisher listings, an alternate ISSN, and an international edition of the journal.

I’m not entirely sure this is something I should handle, but I’m happy to take a stab at it. The bottom line is that each database has different content for each issue. I contacted the true publisher and asked them to explain why the content is different and whether there are two editions of the journal.

To be continued.

Update 4/9/08: The publisher’s representative explained that EBSCO and Gale are responsible for updating the content, and advised me to turn to them. I think the EBSCO coverage is OK, so I replied to the Gale rep and showed her the differences.

Update 4/10/08: I received a response from the Gale rep who clarified that the publisher is somewhat responsible for content, in that they provide a file with the journal content. That makes more sense to me than the publisher’s response. The Gale representative is going to investigate. I wonder if it’s an error, or if the agreement is for incomplete issues. (ASP receives complete issues, it seems; at least, more complete than Gale.)

Workflow roundtable at ER&L

Elizabeth Winter, moderator of the workflow roundtable on Friday, wrote about our discussion on the ER&L Forum blog. There are two posts, one with general notes, and one listing the technologies we use in e-resource management.

She encourages participants to use the forum space to continue the conversation. That was the nice thing about the conference Moodle last year: it was a good place to keep the discussion going, but unfortunately was underused.

Elizabeth made a good point: it would have been nice to have sign-up sheets at the end of the session so that interested participants can keep in contact after the conference. As it were, she emailed the people she remembered were there. I imagine that other folks might subscribe to the ER&L blog, like I do, and may learn about it that way.

I spoke briefly with a few participants on our way out (it was the very last session on the very last day), exchanged business cards, and invited people to check out this blog. If you are one of those people I met, welcome! Look around and leave comments. Chat with me in the box to the right. I look forward to talking with you!

ER&L Friday

What I ended up attending, Friday edition:

• Roundtable: The Inexorable March to Online Only
• The Life and Times of an Embedded Librarian
• Roundtable: Workflows

The roundtable topics were determined by two kinds of participant feedback: evaluations at the original sessions and the results of the ER&L Thought Cloud, where participants suggested and voted on topics they wanted to discuss.

The closing speaker, Tom Wilson (University of Alabama), briefly made a point about Google that I really liked, and that led to discussion afterwards. He pointed out that Google is not a federated search engine: it uses relevancy ranking (maybe well, maybe not well) and federated searches can’t. Federated search engines are, by nature, multiple databases, and can’t apply relevancy like Google can with its single database. I had never thought through to that point, and I think it’ll be on my mind for the plane ride home. (3/23/08: I will contact Tom Wilson about his remarks to make sure I haven’t completely misinterpreted the relevancy point.)

The roundtable about workflow could have been a conference in itself: different libraries (formally) present their situations, challenges, and successes, followed by discussion.

It may look like I’m throwing scissors, but I’m really talking about workflow.

ER&L Thursday

What I ended up attending, Thursday edition:

• E-Resources in a Next Generation Catalog
• Connecting With Students in Their Digital World: LibGuides
• Discovery Services From a Publisher Perspective
• Improving E-Resource Management by Optimizing your ILS
• Intelligence, Open Data, and the Future of ERM
• User-Centered Tech Support of E-Resources and The Inexorable March to Online Only
• Alternatives for Populating ERMs

The LibGuides session was very well done. The librarians shared their subject and class guides before and after LibGuides, and the capabilities of the product are exciting. I really like the use of LibGuides at Scottsdale Community College: their library website is a LibGuides page.

Now I’m going to attempt to be in two places at once. Fortunately, User-Centered Tech Support of E-Resources and The Inexorable March to Online Only are next door to each other. Both are highly relevant to my work: we evaluated our organizational structure, and, although we’ve switched a great deal of our subscriptions to online, we could improve our criteria and approach. Fortunately, both presentations are very detailed and I can pick up a lot from the slides.

(It’s very flattering that Pat and Kelly cite my Library Student Journal article in their presentation.)

ER&L Wednesday

Karen Coyle gave a very interesting keynote this morning that she called “There’s no catalog like no catalog.” She showed the familiar statistic that shows students don’t start library research at the library. Maybe that’s OK, maybe it isn’t, she said. Our information is useful, but we need to put it out on the web where users are. Our catalogs are rich with information if we know how to pull out that information and interpret it. She showed WorldCat Identities, which I hadn’t seen before, and is a really good example of how strong our catalog is when information is combined and viewed together.

A point Coyle made that I really liked (and I hope my paraphrasing is accurate) was that it’s no longer about having the most perfect catalog record, but that our catalog record connects out to other resources and enhances their information.

What I ended up attending, Wednesday edition:

• Analysis of Seven Metadata Creation Guidelines
• Transforming Technical Services
• E-Resources Management - So Many Silos to Synchronize? Still!
• Transforming into Effective E-Resource Management
• Discovery Services and ERM Systems Together
• Serials Solutions 360 (no abstract; see vendor site)

Participants received a flash drive loaded with the conference proceedings, but not all presentations were included. I imagine that may have been due to time constraints and that the missing presentations will later be included on the conference website.

Chandra, Pamela, and me