[WEB4LIB] Re: Serials Solutions modifications? -- do it yourself!

[Karen Harker]

How did you get your print & microfilm holdings in there...by hand or
some automated way?
 
 
 
Karen R. Harker, MLS
UT Southwestern Medical Library
5323 Harry Hines Blvd.
Dallas, TX  75390-9049
214-648-1698
http://www.swmed.edu/library/

>>> "Kenneth R. Irwin" <kirwin at wittenberg.edu> 11/10/02 6:56:23 PM >>>
Hi all,

I don't know to what extent Serials Solutions is likely to modify their

product to link to individual titles, but this is certainly something
that 
you can do on the local level. At our library, we do our whole serials
list 
locally, with no third party intervention; that gives us full control
over 
the linking capability.

It can be a little tricky to go it on your own, but if you someone
who's 
Perl and SQL skills are adequate, it should be quite manageable. You
want 
Perl to take the vendor's title lists out of their native form and
squeeze 
the data into the right shape for your local database; you'll want the
SQL 
& interfacing script language (I use PHP; you could use Perl there too)
to 
handle the user side. We're quite happy with the end result, which
we've 
been using in one form or another since 1998.

You can see the current implementation at:
http://www6.wittenberg.edu/lib/research/ejournals/ 
(although the URL just says "ejournals", it actually has our print and

microfilm holdings as well)

(The UNC Greensboro library has a similar and probably more extensive 
project at:
http://journalfinder.uncg.edu/uncg/ )

Be not afraid -- do it yourself! (I expect that it would be possible to

take the SS list and run some Perlish modifications, but at that point,
you 
might as well save yourself a few thousand bucks on SS and just do the

whole thing yourself.)

Caveats:
1. The startup time on this is not negligible; a personweek or two,
with an 
incremental hour or two for each new vendor you want to include (since
you 
need to write individual data-loaders).
2. Libraries that don't have the in-house scripting skills will be
happier 
just using the plain SS product. Unless, of course, you've always
wanted an 
excuse to learn Perl... ;)

If anyone wants to tackle something like this, I'll be happy to help
out, 
though I'll probably be more useful to folks who are inclined toward 
Unix/Linux development.

Joy and independence,
Ken



Ken Irwin                                              
kirwin at wittenberg.edu 
Reference/Electronic Resources Librarian        (937) 327-7594
Thomas Library, Wittenberg University






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