Linking journal databases to the periodical collection

[Cory Stier]

I'm interested in finding out if and how other libraries are enabling users
to link what they find in a journal database to what's in a local periodical
collection. Specifically, if a user locates a citation for an article in a
database, how do they find out whether the library has access to the
required journal - either in print or fulltext in another database? 

In our library, I've set up all our databases so that they appear in an
IFRAME tag, with our online periodical list appearing in another IFRAME tag
(see http://www.rdc.ab.ca/library/cgi-bin/databases/eric.chtml for example,
but make sure to use IE and not Netscape to view). This allows users to
search our online periodical list for a journal, without having to open a
second window. Incidentally, our periodical list runs under PHP and MySQL..
The reason I went with the IFRAME tag rather than just using frames, is that
I had Javascript issues with many databases. This has meant that we have had
to encourage our users to use IE, because Netscape doesn't support the
IFRAME tag. However, I would prefer to come up with a non-browser specific
method of doing this.

Ideally, I would like to automatically link citations found in a journal
database with our periodical list or the library catalogue so that when a
user locates a citation of interest in a database, they will know
automatically whether or not they will have access to the required journal.
Has anybody been able to do this? If we don't have access to the required
journal, it would also be nice if we could automatically populate our ILL
form with the required information from the citation in the database. I
would be interested in home-grown solutions, as well as any commercial
products that might do what I'm interested in. 

Cory Stier
Web Services Librarian
Red Deer College
Box 5005
Red Deer, AB
T4N 5H5

Phone: (403) 343-4065
Fax: (403) 346-8500
Email: cory.stier at rdc.ab.ca