There seems to me no way of escaping the headaches of ejournal
provision. We have invested in better catalogue provision through data
from third-party sources, this has improved coverage on the catalogue
and enhanced the accuracy of e-holdings description. It has not been a
panacea, and mistakes occur with the data and with inadequate provision
from publishers. There is more to be done here in using the
functionality of our LMS (Millennium) and we have plans to update
catalogue records and the coverage information in our link resolver
simultaneously from a single data source. Ask me again at Christmas how
this is going.
I'm reluctant to rely on user complaints as a way of checking for
"missing issues", it is our job to ensure that the catalogue gives
accurate information. To that end, we check lists of journals to ensure
that the what the catalogue says we have access to is, in fact, what can
be accessed. Yes, it is an enormous task, but we find errors often
enough to make it one worth doing.
Colin.
-------------------------------------------------
Colin Sinclair
Head of Bibliographic Services
University of Stirling
STIRLING
FK9 4LA
Tel: 01786 467218
Fax: 01786 466866
email: [log in to unmask]
-------------------------------------------------
-----Original Message-----
From: An informal open list set up by the UK Serials Group
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of J.W.T.Smith
Sent: 04 October 2006 14:43
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: E-jnls check in
The idea of 'checking in' makes no sense in an e-world. In a p-world
individual copies could go missing and had to be chased but there is no
individual copy in the e-world. If an article or issue is not available
to
you it is likely it is not available to everyone else too. It only needs
one subscriber to notice it is missing and complain to the publisher for
it to be made available to every subscriber.
Also your users become your checkers. In a p-world a user can't tell if
a
copy is missing or just being used by someone else but in an e-world
they
can see if an issue or article is missing and complain to you. With the
millions of users out there it would have to ve a very specialist title
if
no-one missed it for a week.
One could speculate (no flames please) that if no-one missed a title
would
it matter that it was missing? :-).
Regards,
John Smith,
The Templeman Library,
University of Kent, UK.
On Wed, 4 Oct 2006, Sally Elizabeth Rimmer wrote:
> Hi,
>
> We are increasingly switching over to e-only versions of journals and
> I wondered how other institutions managed virtual "checking in" of
> issues if they did it at all. It is a costly business to pay for
> e-access and not receive it. However, it would be an enormous task
to
> check every journal individually.
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> Sally Rimmer
> E-Resources Co-ordinator
> Library and Learning Resources
> University of Derby
> Kedleston Road
>
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