The end of eresourcejournal

At the end of the month, I will begin my new job at Norwich University as their Distance Learning Librarian. I am very excited about this position because I’ve wanted to work with distance learning students since the not-so-long-ago days of my own online graduate program. This is my dream job.

And so, eresourcejournal reaches its end. This blog has been more helpful to me than I expected. The process of writing about things that puzzle and frustrate me has been beneficial. First, it makes me think things through. My brain works faster than my fingers, and as I type my mind wanders to another (more appropriate) idea. Had I not taken the time to write about these topics, I may not have come to those more useful conclusions.

In addition, writing is a great memory tool. Writing online with blog software allowed me to easily retrace my steps and remind myself of past discoveries. In some cases, I was able to solve a new problem by looking back at similar situations.

Lastly, blogging connects: the advantage of writing publicly and online is that other people found me. I am grateful for the comments and emails I’ve received from everyone who visits the site or reads the RSS feed. Librarians have been a source of (wonderful) ideas, commiseration, and camaraderie. EBSCO folks have been very generous with their time, emailing me directly about the concerns and ideas I’ve covered in my posts.

Perhaps others will continue to discover these posts and find them useful. Clearly, they’ll be curious about troubleshooting electronic serials problems, as illustrated in this nifty word cloud of all the text at eresourcejournal (made at Wordle.net). I don’t know yet whether I will blog about my new job. As I re-read that sentence, I realize I likely will. I want to remain connected to my community of colleagues. I have been and will continue to follow blogs related to distance learning and distance learning librarianship. I’m sure I’ll have a few things to talk about, too.

Thank you for your visits and keeping me in your feed readers. Most of all, thank you for your comments.

(P.S. It’s a time of transition: Kelly retired one of her blogs this week. Great minds think alike!)

(P.P.S. It seems like a good idea to close the comments on all my old posts. So I’m gonna. I’ll keep this post open, and feel free to contact me in Meebo at the right.)

Classed as monographs

A few e-journal troubleshooting reports over the past few weeks have the same problem in common: the leader is coded as a monograph. Patrons are unable to find these journals in the catalog because they don’t show up in a Journal Title search.

I contacted EBSCO about this and they changed the bibliographic level. The next time we receive the record, it will be correct. In the meantime, I made the adjustment to the leader.

I’m not sure why this is happening: if it’s a recent error, if it impacted more titles… So far, I’ve noticed three titles with incorrect leaders:

Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Biological Psychiatry
Applied Spectroscopy

A colleague in systems is going to run a report for me to find more.

Update 11/15/07: The report identified almost 100 EBSCO records that are coded as monographs. Another colleague reviewed the list and told me which ones are definitely serials, and I forwarded her short list to EBSCO.

As we reviewed the remaining titles which are coded as monographs, she wondered if EBSCO is sending them coded as I for integrated resources: maybe Voyager can’t accommodate I and changes it to M. I emailed EBSCO a couple of titles that we’re keeping coded M and asking if the leader they send has an I or M. (Further confusing the situation: my Voyager Cataloging view doesn’t give me an option for integrated resources, but my colleague’s does.)

EBSCO’s approach to single records

A gentleman from EBSCO wrote to me in response to yesterday’s post. He asked about the subject headings, using Dance Magazine as an example; I’m not sure if the records differ because the DLC record for our print version has changed since it was downloaded years ago, or if it was a conscious decision by one of our staff members to change the heading.

He also responded to the idea I read about for linking from the catalog to the A-to-Z list.

This is something that we [at EBSCO] have discussed at length and we are looking at introducing as an option. If you think this is something you think you would be interested in exploring we can work with you on it. Basically, you would get one 856 field per record and that record would link to A-to-Z. To simplify maintenance on the library end, we would likely strip down the 856 to the bare minimum and exclude coverage and embargo information – that would be discovered on the A-to-Z list.

I asked a few follow-up questions. In the response, he pointed out that

By using the single 856 approach, maintenance becomes so much simpler when dealing with single records. You only need to be concerned with “adds” and “deletes” at the title level. If a new title is added to your A-to-Z collection, you want to either add an 856 to an existing print record or add a new record. If a title disappears from the A-to-Z collection, then you want to remove the 856 from your existing record or remove the entire record.

It also sounds like we would retain local cataloging if we want to, say, add a subject heading. It sounds as simple as adding the 856 field to our existing record (the one that already has the print/microfilm holdings).

It’s great to hear that EBSCO is exploring this option. I think it’s worth taking a look at this.

Another reason to return to single records

I learned from a colleague today that the subject headings for our e-resource records (which we receive from EBSCO and are updated monthly) do not always match the subject headings in the corresponding print record.

It didn’t take long to find examples:

Dance Magazine: one uses Dance– Periodicals and the other uses Dancing– Periodicals

International Journal of Marketing Research: both use Marketing research– Periodicals, but print also lists Marketing– Periodicals

Qualitative Social Work: both list similar subject headings, but only one uses the heading Social Work– Periodicals

This seems like another good reason to go back to single records for periodicals. I’m still thinking a lot about the idea I read in Serials Review to link from the catalog to the A-to-Z list, rather than directly to the resources. I think it would be a lot easier to push information to the user on the A-to-Z list than in the catalog, and we would eliminate the varying subject headings by using one record, one set of headings.

How to return to single records

I just read a great article in Serials Review about cataloging e-journals. The author interviewed several librarians and summarized their experiences and innovations. She mentioned that one college “will be stripping out the 856 fields from their print records and linking patrons to their A-to-Z list, which will automatically conduct a search to take the patron to the desired title.”

I think that’s a fantastic idea. I still like the idea of having patrons shown all the online options in the catalog record, but this is a great alternative to monthly MARC updates and a solution to the issues surrounding single vs. multiple catalog records. Maybe I was wrong: we shouldn’t leave the A-to-Z list behind.

The Effects of E-journal Management Tools and Services on Serials Cataloging (subscription required)

Focus on the catalog

Rush University has added a lot of information to their A-to-Z list, including print holdings and publisher information. A colleague showed this to my boss, who just shared it with me:

Compare that to ours:

Rush’s list gives patrons a complete picture of their serials holdings. The level of detail is great, too. (I wonder if the field that generates the “click publisher’s name for access” message could be customized for each title: for instance, to instruct patrons on how to access articles from sites that don’t offer automatic IP recognition.)

While this is very cool and very useful, I don’t know if it’s the best use of our time to do the same. Instead of making the A-to-Z list look like the catalog, we should focus on making the catalog better.

I’m starting to think that we should direct patrons to the catalog and leave the A-to-Z list behind. (Not total abandonment: it’s useful for patrons who know what they’re looking for, so we should keep it as an option for patrons to personalize the way they use the library website.) Patrons are looking for information, not formats; we should address their information needs first and then show them the format options.

I’ve mashed together everything I like about the A-to-Z list and the catalog. This is my idea of what an excellent OPAC search would look like:

… only bigger: click it!

I like how it displays the source and coverage up front. When there are multiple results (we have separate records for the electronic titles), patrons can compare their results at the search level:

I crossed out the current display. Location? Call number? Status? Unnecessary for e-resources. The coverage is what’s important. That’s true for print, too. Pull the useful information to the top and we’ve made the catalog more user-friendly.

Cataloging open-access publications

Susanna at Tulane recently posted this question on a couple of listservs I subscribe to.

Does your library have a policy for including open access publications in the local catalog or other web-based discovery sources? If so, we would appreciate hearing to what formal extent you treat these titles to support your users’ needs, and how selective you are in representing them in alongside the traditional (paid) electronic resources.

She received 29 responses and summarized them for the list.

The general impression from this quick scan is that [...] most routinely select and catalog open-access publications alongside their expensive counterparts, in the same work-flow process. With such a small sample, perhaps those who took the time to answer have been actively involved in open-access issues… or at least represent institutions with adequate staffing levels to deal with policies on this topic.

Policies

Two have formal policies for open access, appearing on their web sites. Criteria for selection are similar to those for paid publications.

Three stated they have no policy about selecting and documenting open-access, but in practice, freely available e-journals and integrating resources are included.

Access

Only three said that they did not catalog open access or other freely available electronic publications.

Only one said a short bibliographic record was included in the catalog for these publications.

Most of these institutions used either Serials Solutions or SFX to create a local A-Z listing linked to their web site.

Only one said explicitly that no A-Z list is maintained.

Maintenance

Ongoing maintenance of links was not commented upon much at all.

Text in Custom Coverage

Remember that problem with some MARC records not recognizing text in the custom coverage field? According to an EBSCO rep, a recent update resolved it. Text is appearing in records where it hadn’t before, and they haven’t noticed any problems.

It’s nice to know we have the text option again. For a while I’ve been careful to use MM/DD/YYYY formatting for dates, and I can go back and change those to text.

Problems with text in MARC records?

Last month I wrote about a problem with the Harvard Business Review MARC record (from EBSCO) not including my Custom Coverage end date, “May 2005″. The explanation from EBSCO resulted in a larger puzzle than seemed fitting to describe in a simple update to the original post:

The reason the custom coverage is not being displayed is because the MARC Records product does not recognize the text such as “March 1997″ and so does not know how to represent it on the MARC record.

I would suggest changing the format that you input your coverage to a number based system such as mm/dd/yyyy to have that information transferred over to the MARC record from A-to-Z.

I responded:

since the Collection Editor “Help” file lists (I’m taking this from the site):

Oct 2005 (considers this to be 1 October 2005)

as an option for Custom Coverage dates, but the MARC Records product doesn’t recognize text, why is it given as an option in the Collection Editor? Clearly, these two products work together for many of your customers, so it might be helpful to note the incompatibility.

Later, in my rush to a) notify my colleagues that we can’t use text in Collection Editor, b) download a list of all other instances of text that won’t appear in the catalog so I can fix them, and c) update my original blog entry, I realized that I’ve used quite a bit of text in the Custom Coverage fields within Collection Editor. I’ve used it to indicate rolling coverage on non-EJS titles, split coverage, and embargo dates (before EBSCO introducted the Custom Embargo field). And text hasn’t been a problem. So I sent a follow-up reply:

I found a few examples of instances where text is used in the Custom Coverage field and it has appeared in the MARC record. So now I’m not so sure why I can’t use “May 2005″. Would you please share these with the Development staff?

1. I used an end date of “Oct. 2005″ for Milan Journal of Mathematics, and it has appeared in our MARC record ever since… [856 40 |3 Full text available: Sept. 2002 - Oct. 2005. |z Available in...]

2. I played with the fields for Environment and Behavior so I could better represent our coverage. See the MARC record here… [856 40 |3 Full text available: all of 1997, March - Nov. 1998. |z Available in...]

3. The Custom Coverage begin date for Echocardiography is entered as “2000 Aug.”, which is how it appears in our MARC record: [856 40 |3 Full text available: 2000 Aug. -. |z Available in...]

4. A colleague used volume numbers in the Custom Coverage for APS Journal, which appear in our MARC record: [856 40 |3 Full text available: v.3 no.4 (1994) - v.3 no.4 (1994). |z Available in...]

5. Another colleague used a season format (”Winter 2004″) instead of calendar date for East European Jewish Affairs: [856 40 |3 Full text available: Winter 2004 -. |z Available in...]

However, here’s something weird: I used text in the record for Studies in Applied Mathematics that reads “Rolling coverage - Previous two years” for the Blackwell link, but that source doesn’t show up in the MARC record.

So it doesn’t seem to be a difference between using text in the Begin date or End date, nor does it seem to matter whether the information was input using the Collection Editor or Upload. I appreciate the Development staff’s thoughts on these examples, and I look forward to their reply.

Something’s going on lately. Things keep coming up that turn my understanding of EBSCO’s rules upside-down. First the whole no-EJS-access-for-unsharable-passwords, now this. It’s a little disorienting, but at least I’ll come out with a better understanding of how this all works.

Improving the catalog

I recently had the opportunity to explain the difference between publication dates and coverage dates in the catalog to someone who mistook the former for the latter. It made me think about how the catalog’s information is presented to users and how it can be improved.

There are many possibilities for displaying catalog information, and there are always improvements that can be made to catalogs. Currently, our search results display very little holdings information for serials, and no coverage information. There are often multiple locations for a single record (e.g. current periodicals, microfilm, offsite storage, etc.) which causes a Title has multiple holdings message instead of listing the locations. Our e-resources’ coverage is listed in the bib record instead of the item record, where it appears for the print/microfilm versions (we have a separate record for e-resources).

In both cases, patrons have to select a record (often from several options) to view the holdings. It would be great to include the holdings dates (if not the URL, too) in this initial “menu” of search results, allowing patrons to compare resources side-by-side. It would bring an element of our A-to-Z list to the catalog. With periodicals especially, patrons are often more interested in what access the library has than how long the journal has been in publication. Still, the converse is true, and sometimes patrons need to see that there’s more available than in the library’s holdings (here’s a great place to link to WorldCat). Why not include both? I’m already daydreaming about a new interface design…

Update 6/28/07: Here’s the design I’m thinking about.