I am glad that Anne Davenport raised the issue of ISSNs for
electronic journals since I had been wondering whether to raise this
myself. My problem, and associated question, are rather different
though.
Some time ago when e-journals were first appearing we decided,
partly on advice from TALIS I believe, that the best way to handle
cataloguing of e-journals was to give then a second record separate
from the printed version. This meant that, for those many titles
which don't have a separate ISSN allocated by the publisher, we
had to use local control numbers to identify the e-titles.
We are now finding that the widespread use of these local control
numbers has seriously hamstrung us in our wish to move towards a
portal environment with cross-linking etc. since many of the
available resources - including, to name but a few, SFX and links
from CSA databases or ISI databases, identify holdings by means of
ISSNs. To change this now would require a great deal of work.
Is anyone else in this position - other TALIS libraries, perhaps? Any
suggested solutions?
Ian Mayfield
Associate University Librarian (Electronic Services)
Architecture Librarian
European Documentation Centre Librarian
Tel. 023 9284 3239
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