Medlibbers,
Thank you Cynthia, Margaret, Elisabeth, Kitty, Tom, Cindy, Valerie, Mina,
Michele, Dalia and Ellen for commiserating and offering helpful
suggestions.
Comments: (Vendors, please take note!)
"<named vendor's>changes are a job in themselves"
"there is no way we can consistently keep up with embargoes and/or
coverage"
"great from a content standpoint, but something else to maintain"
"no increase in staff to handle it"
"Creating and maintaining the list was tons of work and it would have been
more work if I hadn't been allowed to edit the web pages myself!"
"I change them once a year, period"
"aggravating, is it not"
"way beyond managable for one person"
"other than hiring a full time journal detective & webmaster, patrons will
just have to go with the flow"
"I don't want to "dis" <Vendor X> on the list, but we use <Vendor Y>, a
much more user friendly vendor."
Several good suggestions were made:
1. Use Serial Solutions www.serialssolutions.com ("least expensive…well
worth the money") [I already have a quote]
2. Use Ebsco A to Z service for a fee
3. Use TDNet ("…list is maintained on TDnet's servers (no web maintenance
by us or our IT dept)")
4. Post a caveat/disclaimer "accurate as per x date"
Lastly, I found an excellent poster presentation from MLA this year that
seems to do everything I want to do, but on a quick read it seems more than
I could handle at this point. See "Creation of a Web-accessible combined
print and electronic journal holdings list" by Chris Ewing and David Morse
available at http://www.mlanet.org/am/am2003/e_present/049_ewing_morse.pdf.
Although these are good suggestions, I was hoping for something home-grown,
i.e. "free." Hiring a service to do this substantially adds to the overall
cost of electronic collections. But then, so does doing it myself *sigh*.
Thank you one and all!
>>> "Jo-Anne M. Aspri" <[log in to unmask]> 11/12/03 11:36AM >>>
Colleagues,
I am trying to understand --on a practical basis-- how to manage
monthly changes to the titles in licensed electronic full-text
(journal) packages. I currently license two popular packages, but because
frequently adding and dropping titles seems to be a common practice
with all vendors/aggregators, I'm not certain it would be helpful to name
them.
Up to now, I have created a database of all the titles, print and
electronic, to which we have access, including holdings/coverage, and
embargoes, if any--approximately 700 titles in all. One of the current
uses of the database is the production of a print list (yes, still a
print list!) so that patrons and I can easily check to see what we
have.
A future plan is to have a list pushed out to our intranet as this
resource becomes more useful. The problem is that one cannot know with
certainty which ejournals are accessible on any given day because of
vendor title switches.
The vendors, apparently at the publishers' whims, have taken the
stance that as long as they notify you of changes, sometimes a lengthy list,
they have fulfilled their part of the bargain. What is one supposed to
DO with that knowledge?!? Has everyone resorted to updating and
re-creating local lists/databases on a MONTHLY basis? This seems like
a LOT of extra, new work and I am led to wonder if I've missed something
simpler.
Beyond the issue of my own work volume, I suspect that our web manager
will flip if I need a monthly update of a file of titles updated on
our intranet! More likely they will just not be able to accommodate such
frequent updating, and I would be envious of their 'just say no'
approach. I would imagine the same issue would present for those who
list e-titles in an OPAC.
I hope this hasn't already been on the list, and I missed it. It seems
like something many of us are facing.
TIA,
Jo-Anne
Jo-Anne M. Aspri, MLS
Director, Library Services
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