Report of the Electronic Resources Records Task Force
May 23, 2005
The Task Force held four meetings to discuss the following issues:
· whether adding MARC records to the catalog for aggregator databases is feasible;
· whether adding MARC records to the catalog for aggregator databases is desirable;
· which vendor products would be acceptable;
· what associated costs and staffing would be necessary;
· what procedures should be in place for electronic products.
Current Practices
The task force began by exploring what other libraries in the South Florida area and the Council of State University Libraries are currently doing with regards to electronic resource records. A survey was sent to members of the CSUL Electronic Collections Committee, which showed that no libraries are currently loading records for aggregator databases and only 2 libraries (UF and UNF) are anticipating doing this in the near future. The University of Florida volunteered their local committee report to our task force for consideration.
Phone calls were made to Nova Southeastern, University of Miami, St. Thomas, and University of South Florida. University of Miami currently loads records from SerialSolutions. They have duplicate entries in the catalog for print and electronic copies. Neither Nova nor St. Thomas is currently loading records for aggregator databases.
Procedural Issues
The committee reviewed a workflow diagram of what happens during the process of an electronic resource acquisition. A readily available chart is available from the Digital Library Federation at http://www.diglib.org/pubs/dlfermi0408/dlfermi0408appb.htm. A further rendering of some of the FIU processes was also undertaken (see appendices).
Available Products and Costs
The committee broke into teams and explored products by 3 vendors: Ebsco’s A-Z, ExLibris’s SFX MarcIt, and SerialSolutions. The following issues were under consideration with each product: how it fits in with current work processes; interoperability with current products and standards; availability of a “one record” option (i.e., 1 record for both print and electronic); frequency of updating; and customer service.
¨ Ebsco A-Z – Ebsco includes CONSER records when available, but will not work in conjunction with SFX and would require separate maintenance and linking of materials. Additionally, there is no “one record” availability. Customer service was questionable. Ebsco was dismissed as an option.
¨ SerialSolutions – SerialSolutions uses CONSER records. “One record” option is available. Disadvantage is that a second database would need to be maintained, in addition to our current SFX implementation. Cost available upon request.
¨ SFX MarcIt – SFX has a distinct advantage because we are already maintaining the SFX KnowledgeBase for use as a citation linker; little additional maintenance would be required. MarcIt uses print CONSER records where available. “One record” option is available. Customer service is said to be good. Cost available upon request.
Feasibility
Whereas it is possible to purchase MARC records from several vendors, FCLA reports that at this time there is no loader that will allow the import of such MARC records into the FIU NOTIS catalog. Such loaders would need to be programmed from scratch, at a time when FCLA is concentrating on converting libraries into an Aleph environment. Any such programming would be used short-term and soon abandoned.
GenLoad is available within the Aleph environment, which does have features that let you load vendor-supplied serial records into Aleph. SerialSolutions record loaders are currently being tested for UNF and UF. Whereas no testing is being done on SFX MarcIt loaders at this time, the fact that MarcIt is an ExLibris product leads us to believe the loader should not be problematic.
Desirability
Whereas no product was found to be perfect, there remains a strong desire to have MARC records available in the catalog for these elusive journal titles. We have online access to more than 18,000 full text journals through the aggregators which are currently not accessible through the FIU catalog.
Recommendation
At this time, the committee recommends consideration of the SFX MarcIt product. However, the committee recommends a final review of available selections and changes in products be conducted at the time of implementation.
Committee Members
· Nancy Hershoff, Chair
· Valerie Boulos
· Inna Ilinskaya
· Sherry Mosley
· John Radenich
· Emily Ray
· Sue Wartzok
· Elaine Winske