Bridge Serials Working Group

Bridge Consortium: CarletonCollege & St.OlafCollege Libraries

Bridge Serials Working Group

Cataloging E-Journals in OPAC

Report on an online survey

Nov 2005

To gain insight into how other libraries are dealing with the questions about how best to make e-journal access clear and easy for their patrons to negotiate, SWG sent a survey to several discussion lists Oct 21-24, 2005. In particular, we were interested in the question of whether or not libraries that were using an open-URL resolver and A-Z list were also cataloging e-journals for their OPAC.

We asked six questions (one with 3 parts). We posted our survey on innopacusers, obegroup, serialst and autocat. By Nov 16, we had received 22 responses. Library types included 12 private colleges & universities, 5 state colleges/universities, 4 science/health sciences librariesand 1 academic library consortium.

The questions and responses from each library are compiled below. The text of the email survey we sent follows the compiled responses to each question.

Responses.

1. Do you add MARC (or other) bib records for e-journals to your OPAC?

We catalog everything in our OPAC. As of June, 2005, we had 18,122records for e-journals in our OPAC. We are part of OhioLINK, which hasan "ElectronicJournalCenter." TechPro provides OhioLINK memberlibraries with cataloging records for the e-journals inthe "ElectronicJournalCenter." Of the 18,122 records, 5,823 of themwere records for EJC titles cataloged by TechPro. Also, 5,210 of the

18,122 records were provided by Lexis-Nexis. These records are notfull-MARC. Finally, 6,238 of the 18,122 records were for EbscoHOSTtitles. These records are also not full-MARC. (Private college)

Yes, but not for everything (i.e. aggregator titles not in the primary scope of our collection or short-term/ephemeral titles we do not create bib records for). All other types we have MARC for, but often the bib records come out of the bib records we had for the print version of a journal. (health sciences library)

Yes we do and for several reasons right now. Our OPAC serves as a backup should our resolver go down for some reason. Our OPAC also allows for more rich alternate and title abbreviation searches as well as a subject search. (Health sciences library)
We have added MARC records for e-journals in JSTOR, Project MUSE and EJS, as they have been deemed stable enough not to require constant changing. Even so, there are problems keeping the holdings info in those records current, and JSTOR, in particular, has a fairly sizeable number of new titles to be added each month. We do not add MARC records for any other aggregated databases. Their holdings are much, much too volatile. The whole point of paying SerialsSolutions to track our full-text e-journal holdings is because we do not have the personnel to do so ourselves -- we pay them to do it -- why should anyone replicate that huge amount of work, tracking the same data in two different places. According to the usability testing we have done so far, our users do not look for e-journals in the OPAC anyway, so you'd be looking at a huge amount of on-going work for a small staff of people, duplicating work we pay someone else to do, for extremely little benefit. (Ithaca)

Yes (Auckland U of Tech)

Yes, we do add bib records for e-journals to our OPAC. However, there is an important caveat to our adding bib records for e-journals to the OPAC.At this time, we add only those titles that meet two criteria: 1) We arepaying for the subscription to theelectronic title and 2) the electronic version provides us with ourarchival access to that title. We do not add records for titles where the online is provided free with the print, andwe do not add records for titles that are in aggregated databases. Weconsider the fulltext content inaggregated databases to be unstable. In a practical sense, this means that we catalog all JSTOR titlesand all individual electronic journal subscriptions where the electronicis the only version we receive.For electronic journal packages from publishers, and our policy is tocatalog those titles that we considerreliable, stable, and substitutions for the print version. (Furman)

Yes, for full text titles. (Private college)

Yes--we receive MARC bib records from Serials Solutions. We prefer the CONSER format-neutral records when available (HELIN)

We use Serials Solutions for our A-Z list and download the MARC records they provide to our OPAC. (Private college)

The F&M Library does not use any open-URL resolver though we have considered the following products - SFX and Serials Solutions. Presently, we are adding MARC bib records for e-journals to the OPAC. (F&M)

We avoid spending the huge amount of time required for cataloging electronic journals by buying the Serials Solutions' MARC records service, which we share among 9 colleges in our consortium catalog. There is one record per title, and an 856 for each college (e.g. "View available full text for RIC."). Each 856 links to one institution's A-Z list record for the desired title, so all sources are displayed at that point. (Rhode IslandCollege)

OccidentalCollege does the same [as RIC] without being in consortia, and we are very happy with the products from Serials Solutions. I highly recommend it. Even before Serials Solutions, we tried to catalog electronic journals...Serials Solutions has made it possible to include them all, and they take care of the changes in the aggregators. (Occidental)

No, we have a comprehensive a-z list (includes print collection, which is in the OPAC). (University of the Sciences in Philadelphia).

No (Private college)

Yes, sometimes on separate records and sometimes as additions to the print record (if we own the print). (State university)

yes (Academic library)

no (GoucherCollege Library)

Yes, MARC records(Auburn)

Yes (Health sciences library)

No (MaryvilleUniversity)

Yes. (DuquesneUniversity)

Only for stable resources like Muse, JSTOR, or ACS. (St. Cloud)

1a. Do you enhance these records for local use by adding access points foracademic departments or disciplines?

No, we don't. (Private college)

Generally no. (health sciences library)

Not a lot in our MARC records, but yes on our Weblist we have a subject listing that pretty much mimics the departments and clinics. For our MARC records we do make sure that there is a least one MeSH heading.(Health sciences library)

No. What records we do add, we add a "series" note for EJS (Collection), JSTOR (Collection) or Project MUSE (Collection) -- subjects are usually already in the MARC records we download one-by-one from OCLC. (Ithaca)

No (Auckland U of Tech)

Yes and no. We use the appropriate subject headings in the bib record, but we do notadd additional access points to the OPAC. However, on the library website, we maintainweb pages for each major / academic discipline, listing the appropriate resources for thatdepartment. If feasible, we will provide links to electronic journals onthat subject on the subjectweb page. (Furman)

Not per se, but they do have subject headings. (Private college)

We do not enhance these records, except that I update the author and subject fields when they are out of date. (HELIN)

No. I leave them just the way they are and the only time I change them is for authority control purposes. (Private college)

n/a (University of the Sciences in Philadelphia).

n/a (Private college)

Yes, we use 690 to provide discipline-related information, mostly for our MyLibrary implementation. (State university)

No, but do some authority record clean-up (Academic library)

N/A (GoucherCollege Library)

No (Auburn)

No (Health sciences library)

No, we enhance these records with an access text statement, etc. But we do not add other access points for academic departs, etc.(DuquesneUniversity)

Not in the OPAC, but we are in our A-Z list.(St. Cloud)

1b. Are these separate records for the electronic or an 856 link/s in therecord for print/microform?

Our e-journals are cataloged separate from the print. The only timethat we include an 856 in the print/microform record, rather thancataloging the electronic access separately, is when we receiveelectronic access per our print subscription and do not pay extra forthe electronic access. (Private college)

It depends. We do both. If we have a print bib, we use it. If we do not (i.e. we never owned the item in print), we then use a bib for electronic. (health sciences library)

We use the one record approach and just put 856 link fields on our print record. If we add the record new for the electronic, then we will add the electronic version. (Health sciences library)

Our former practice was to "piggyback" an electronic MFHD onto the print bib record, but it made the OPAC display very confusing to our users and it made it very difficult for the Acquisitions people tracking the billing. We now add separate bib records for electronic, and edit the bib-linking to work, where appropriate, to print and MF. We have also begun the labor-intensive work of retrospectively finding all the old "piggyback" records, finding new MARC records for the electronic versions, adding those and re-linking the e-MFHDs to the new e-bibs, as well as setting up the bib-linking between. (Ithaca)

Separate records for e-titles received via aggregators or via individual sub. Link in print record to free web versions of a resource such as govt.docs. (Auckland U of Tech)

We use a separate record for the electronic version of a journal. We place a 776 field in the print recordto point to the online version, and vice versa. (Furman)

E-only records, if we do not own the print, an 856 and notes if we do. We use an added entry for the e-package or publisher name which is extremely useful for the staff if not for users. (Private college)

They are separate. (HELIN)

We use separate records for the electronic journals rather than a link in the print record. (Private college)

n/a (University of the Sciences in Philadelphia).

n/a (Private college)

Both. (State university)

separate records (Academic library)

single records, multiple 856s (Auburn)

mostly single records; full e-records when no print(Health sciences library)

they are separate records, we do not include an 856 in the print/microform records(DuquesneUniversity)

At this point they are separate. All formats are separate due to a long-standing cataloging decision which we're now regretting. We're going to investigate all this and see if we can condense/combine. (St. Cloud)

1c. When you have the title from a variety of sources, do you haveseparate records for each source? Or just separate 856 links in the recordfor print?

We follow current cataloging rules and have all electronic access on a single record for the online title. For example, if we have access tocurrent issues via OhioLINK's "ElectronicJournalCenter" and if wehave access to back issues via JSTOR, then we have appropriate notesfor both on a single record for the online title. Here is an example:

• 506 Subscription and registration with JSTOR required for access toback issues
• 506 OhioLINK membership required for access to current issues
• 550 Back issues digitized and made available by: JSTOR
• 550 Current issues available through agreement to OhioLINK
• 856[4,0] |u current issues of Evolution (Lancaster, Pa. : Online)
• 856[4,0] |u toback issues of Evolution (Lancaster, Pa. : Online) (Private college)

Because we use an ERM we have separate MARC records for each source and these records include an 856 field in them. (health sciences library)

We have separate links in the one bibliographic record and we denote who the source is in a |3 and in |z we add the years of coverage as we might have say 1997-2001 with one source and 2002-present from another source. (Health sciences library)

We have placed our 856s in the MFHD, not the bib record. For a single title which we get from more than one source, we put in additional 856s in the MFHD. The link text we use is the holdings info -- so, we'll use link text of "v. 1 (1901) - v. 79 (1979) (JSTOR)" for one source and "v.80 (1980) - current (Project MUSE)" for another, for example. (Ithaca)

Previously multiple urls in one record. Now a single link to a Serials Solutions live site, representing latest holdings availablevia each source we have access to. (Auckland U of Tech)

Because we only link to the stable versions that we are directly paying for, I cannot think of any titles that have more than one online version right now. Although, as we increasingly switch

titles from print to online, I think this is an issue we will begin to encounter and a policy that we will have to develop. (I would be very interested to hear how other institutions are handling this, if you don't mind sharing your results.) (Furman)

Separate 856 links and notes for multiple e-versions. Also separate holdings record. (Private college)

We catalog paper and microform together on the same bib records and one separate from for the electronic version. (HELIN)

We have one record for the electronic journal which links to our Serials Solutions page. That page shows the databases it is available in and the dates of coverage. (Private college)

There are no separate records for the electronic form as 856 links are added to the record for the print form. Links are kept-up-to-date by the Acquisitions Assistant. (F&M)

n/a (University of the Sciences in Philadelphia).

n/a (Private college)

Separate 856 links originally, but more recently we have used the alpha list to provide for multiple source links. E-Matrix (our internally-created ERMS) will soon be the repository for this info. (State university)

no, single electronic record with hosted 856 tag maintained by our vendor (Academic library)

Separate 856s on the same record (Auburn)

Separate 856s in one record (Health sciences library)

No, we have only one record in our OPAC per title. We use SFX as our link resolver, the records we get from them take our patrons to an SFX menu where access options are presented (DuquesneUniversity)

So far, every single one is separate. (St. Cloud)

2. If you do not add bib records for e-journals to your OPAC, then how do you provide subject/discipline access to these titles - both LCSH and/orlocal?

We do add bibs. (health sciences library)

Not applicable as we do add them. (Health sciences library)

We are using PirateSource software from EastCarolinaUniversity, customized locally, to provide both an alphabetical listing of databases AND a dynamically-created subject list of both electronic and print/other format items by subject. We contract with SerialsSolutions for their E-Journal Portal -- which is their A-Z list, hosted on their servers and maintained/updated constantly by SerialsSolutions. The E-Journal Portal (which we call "Journal List" on our webpage) is searchable by individual e-journal title. It's the main access point for anyone looking for a given journal title -- print or electronic, as we send our print (and MF) journal info to SerialsSolutions as well. (Ithaca)

In addition to catalogue records, we have a Serials Solution suppliedA_Z list, and we also compile lists by subject. (Auckland U of Tech)

All of our electronic titles, whether they are added to the OPAC or not, are added to ourlink resolver. We use our link resolver to generate our e-journal list, which has the abilityto be sorted by subject. The subject categories are provided by our link resolver vendorand are imperfect at best. The subject categories do not always align very well with the majors /fields of study offered at Furman, but they are better than nothing. Down the road, we maycreate our own subject categories and assign each journal to the categories we feel areappropriate. However, this would be very time consuming, and we are still in debate abouthow to best go about it. (Furman)

N/A (HELIN)

N/A (Private college)

Only a very small number of our users approach journals by subject. When they do, it's likely to be for broader categories than our cataloging allows: what psychology journals does the library have? A keyword search in our A-Z list can provide this information. (University of the Sciences in Philadelphia).

n/a (Private college)

N/A (State university)

N/a (Academic library)

We use SerialsSolutions and rely on the subject listing available as part of their A-Z list and search interface. (GoucherCollege Library)

N/A (Auburn)

N/A(Health sciences library)

We don't. You can title-keyword search our "A-Z list" (which isn't really a list but a manual-entry point into our openurl resolver), but we don't intend anyone to use it that way. (MaryvilleUniversity)

NA (DuquesneUniversity)

A-Z list. (St. Cloud)

3. Are you removing bib records for e-journals from the OPAC in favor of the A-Z list, or are you retaining them? What are your reasons for this?

We are retaining our bib records and are adding them. We are actually moving away from using an A-Z list and focusing more on catalog-only access as this helps provide us with "one-stop shopping" regardless of format (print or electronic) and gives us better searching tools. We also have a journals scope within our catalog ( sciences library.edu/search~S5/). We are making these choices primarily due to workload issues - our choice is to use the catalog and an A-Z list or just the catalog and maintaining this information in two places is just too much work for us. (health sciences library)