Full-Text/Online periodicals access database

[Mark Jordan]

Hi Eric,

We populated our ejournals database at
http://mercury.lib.sfu.ca/cgi-bin/ejournals/EJDB?Display=BrowseForm with
parts of MARC records from our catalogue (title, issuing body, and subject
fields). We also load title lists from vendors (actually, from jake,
which gets its title lists from vendors and then adds subject headings
and some other metadata).

Our next phase, which will be in place soon, will be to create brief MARC
records for the items in our ejournals database and load them back into
the catalogue with a GMD of '[computer file]' so people can find them in
either the catalogue or the ejournals database. The 856 link in these
brief records will point back to our ejournals database. We will then have
one record for the print version of the journal and another, single record
for all the various versions of the corresponding ejournal. This approach
wouldn't work for libraries who believe that a single bib record should
exist for _all_ versions of a work, but since the title will be the same
for both records (apart from the GMD) and since all ejournal records will
have appropriate subject and issuing body cataloguing, users should be
able to find the ejournal record.

We chose this admittedly circular approach because the ejournals database
lets us maintain and present the user with all the information about all
the versions of that particular journal. In a number of cases, we've got
access to multiple versions of a journal; for example, from the
publisher's site, from EBSCOHost, from ABI/Inform, etc.
http://mercury.lib.sfu.ca/cgi-bin/ejournals/EJDB?Display=JournalID615 is
an example. (You may not see any details because you are not coming from
within our IP address range, but you'll see list of versions.) We are
putting a record back into the catalogue so we can have a single link in
our catalogue to all the versions of an ejournal, and any other
information that should accompany each version such as required passwords,
notices about proxy settings, client software requirements, etc. Another
feature is that we can count ejournal usage, because all the links to the
actuall ejournal are redirected through a script that updates a table in
the database.

Our Ejournals Librarian uses the ejournals database to manage all this
'version' information. It also takes the work of keeping up with ejournals
and their associated URLS, access restrictions, etc. away from our
cataloguers and centralizes it with our ejournals librarian. When we get
access to an electronic version of a journal we have in print, we don't
have to touch the bibliographic and associated records for the print
journal - this is managed in the ejournals database. The ejournals
librarian can create a brief record using the MARC data from our catalogue
or any other copy cataloguing she needs. This approach wouldn't scale very
well for large ejournal "acquisitions", but since the ejournals database
can read MARC records as well as delimited lists from jake (or any other
kind of delimtied list), we can batch load large lists after all the
necessary data has been prepared.

Currently, every week we plan to create a fresh set of MARC records,
delete all the old records from the ejournals database from our catalogue,
then load the fresh batch. This will ensure that the ejournals database
and the records in the catalogue are fairly synchronized.

If you have any questions, let me know,

Mark


>
> Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2000 08:57:07 -0700
> From: Eric Tull <tull at ucalgary.ca>
> To: web4lib at webjunction.org
> Subject: Re: Full-Text/Online periodicals access database
> Message-ID: <3A02E053.8DFCC8CF at ucalgary.ca>
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>
> I am responding late to the messages about full-text/online periodicals access
> databases, and Peter Scott's web site listing libraries that have implemented
> this.  This raises some interesting questions.
>
> Are these databases supplemental to their library catalogues or separate from
> them?  Are they entering these electronic journals in their catalogues, or is
> the catalogue being considered passe for electronic journals?  If they are
> entering the electronic journals in the catalogue, are they duplicating their
> efforts by maintaining an independent database of e-journals?
>
> At University of Calgary Library, we have entered all our electronic journals in
> the catalogue.  We are looking at ways that we can pull these journals out of
> the catalogue and move them into a database and/or various web pages in a way
> that these resources could be updated on a frequent basis from the catalogue.
> That way the work of maintaining the e-journals could stay with cataloguing
> where it has always been, but we could have the advantages of delivering them
> from a web-based database and our web pages.
>
> Are others trying this approach, and what success are you having with it?
>
> Eric Tull
> Public Services Systems Librarian
> University of Calgary Library
>