[WEB4LIB] Proquest holdings problems

[Blanton, Kimly Sabine]

This sounds similar to some of the discussions at our library.  I'm
interested in knowing if your library has considered adding these journals
to your public catalog or possibly creating a dynamic database of all of
your electronic journals?

Regards,
Kimly "Kim" S. Blanton
Computer Systems Administrator - Systems Department - Academic Library
Services 
East Carolina University -Greenville, North Carolina 27858-4353
voice 252.328.2223 ~ fax 252.328.6222
email : blantonk at mail.ecu.edu 

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Stacy Pober [SMTP:spober at manhattan.edu]
> Sent:	Thursday, July 20, 2000 4:04 PM
> To:	Multiple recipients of list
> Subject:	[WEB4LIB] Proquest holdings problems
> 
> I wanted to try to have our list of journals integrated into the
> holdings feature for ProQuest, UMI/Bell & Howell's periodical indexing
> database. The ProQuest files do include some full text, but a large
> number of titles are index/abstract only.  Since we get a large number
> of journals through other online vendors, I thought it would be nice to
> have holdings notes that point users to the source for the full text
> when we have it available.  We have a large periodical list, over 12,000
> titles, most of them available through internet vendors.  
> 
> It turns out that ProQuest requires the holdings to be in the following
> format:
> Title|ISSN|Start Date|End|Date|Microform|Paper|CD-ROM|Note
> 
> First problem:  they only list microform, paper and CD-ROM as format
> options. And you MUST select one of those formats with a "y" otherwise
> the entry will not be accepted.	  Most of the journals we have
> access to
> come from online databases.  I asked UMI's technical support about that
> ("Have you guys heard about the "Internet"?  I've heard it's going to be
> a really big thing someday...") and was told that this might be an
> option in the future versions, but right now, you must specify one of
> the more traditional formats and you can't use HTML links as part of the
> holdings field.
> 
> The next problem is that, for a large number of journals we have them
> from several sources.  We may have a print subscription plus have the
> same title supplied by more than one online database, and the dates of
> coverage will be different for the print subscription and in the
> individual online databases.  So ideally, instead of giving a start and
> end date, I'd rather just have the title, ISSN, and a note that tells
> users to check our online periodical list.  However, the start and end
> dates are NOT optional data fields.
> 
> Has anyone found a workaround for these limitations?  
> 
> Stacy Pober
> Information Alchemist
> Manhattan College Libraries
> spober at manhattan.edu
> http://www.manhattan.edu/library