Colin,
I remain to be convinced that this work is cost-effective. We have over
28,000 titles (over 24,000 unique) and it would be full-time job to check
all of these often enough to find missing titles before the users do.
In fact I don't think it would possible - 10,000 users, even if they only
averaged 1 minute a day in the e-journal service, equals 6.5 staff
working 24 hours a day. We have around 1200 users a day using the
e-journals service and I suspect they spend more than 10 minutes per
visit.
Regards,
John Smith.
On Wed, 4 Oct 2006, Colin Sinclair wrote:
> 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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