Hi Louise,

We are using the Serials Solutions knowledgebase both as our link resolver
and to provide catalogue records for our OPAC.

As part of the renewal process each year for the journals I look after I
have always checked our OPAC to make sure it reflects fully the titles that
we subscribe to. In the process I uncover all kinds of problems including
loss of access, title transfers that we hadn't previously identified as well
as a host of other problems - no wonder the renewals process is so long and
arduous these days! Anyway I'd better move on. 

On your first point:

Whilst checking our access at the end of August 2007 to our one American
Association on Mental Retardation journal, Mental Retardation, I noticed
that the holdings for this title on our OPAC were closed at the end of 2006.
I then discovered that the title had changed from 2007 to become
Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, but that the new title was not
tracked on Serials Solutions. I contacted Serials Solutions to ask them
"Does SS Continue to Map a New Journal Title When the Former Title Was
Tracked?" Serials Solutions informed me that their "system is frankly not
clever enough to recognize that one title has become another and subscribe
your library to the most recent title".

This isn't a problem when we can subscribe to all of the titles available
from a database e.g. American Chemical Society, Annual Reviews, Business
Source Complete, Project MUSE etc. Any new title added to that database or
any title change that takes place in that database will automatically be
added to our profile.

However, it is a major problem when we only subscribe to a subset of that
package e.g. in this case we only subscribe to one of the American
Association on Mental Retardation journals. In this case we have to manually
add this to our profile. 

Of course this has major implications for us (and I presume others who use
such knowledge bases) in that there are many situations where we only
subscribe to subsets of a publishers journal. Add to this the fact that we
participate in the majority of NESLi2 negotiated "big deals" and that many
of these are very large publishers where the big deals almost always have a
significant number of exceptions means that we have a lot of manual updating
to do. Since many of these publishers are expanding rapidly and because
there is a lot of movement of titles from publisher to publisher etc. means
that although we spent a significant amount of time setting up our access to
these "deals" and our other subscriptions when we first implemented Serials
Solutions a year ago we now find that we have to continue to invest
significant amounts of time keeping the knowledge base up to date so that
our OPAC and our link resolver accurately reflect our access rights. 

This has been made even more difficult where publishers have not worked
closely with third party services such as Serials Solutions to e.g. to
separate out backfiles from frontfiles which are licensed separately. We
have some problems with e.g. Blackwell titles where backfiles that were free
to us are suddenly withdrawn without warning to be sold separately, but
where the knowledgebase on Serials Solutions doesn't yet separate out the
frontfiles from the backfiles, meaning more manual amendments are required.
We do find that this situation is improving with a number of publishers, but
there is still a long way to go. 

Publishers need to be aware that if we aren't able to reflect our rights to
their content accurately through such third party systems that some of their
content may appear to be non-accessible to our users through our OPAC and
link resolver.  

On your second point:

This depends on the relationship between the knowledge base and the
publisher as well as how often our systems are updated with the information
from the knowledgebase (we update our systems monthly). We do find that it
is common for there to be a lag period of at least 2-3 months before changes
e.g. titles transferring to new publishers, title changes etc. are reflected
in our systems e.g. with the customized title alert we get from Elsevier for
changes in our licensed content on ScienceDirect we often find that we can't
immediately make these changes on Serials Solutions because the changes
haven't yet been reflected in the knowledgebase and have to either be
proactive and email Serials Solutions with the missing information or else
sit and wait for the content to become available. 

What we really need are better relationships between third party systems and
publishers so that these knowledge bases can more accurately reflect our
rights to publishers content. The utopian future would be updating of these
knowledge bases in real time by publishers' systems and less need for manual
intervention by ourselves.

I've written this in a bit of a rush, so I hope it all makes sense.

Cheers
Lesley and Karen Allen


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lesley Crawshaw, Faculty Information Consultant, 
Learning and Information Services 
University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, AL10 9AB 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
email: [log in to unmask]
phone: 01707 284662 fax: 01707 284666
list owner: [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 Cole, Louise
Sent: 07 November 2007 15:06
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Journal coverage databases and changes of title

Afternoon all,

 

I'm trying to get to grips with e-journal management in a new
institution now I've moved jobs and have a question for you.

 

If you use a commercial knowledge base to track your journals, how well
does it cope with a very common occurrence, the changing of a journal
title?  Does it recognise all changes and add titles accordingly, or is
it very much hit and miss?  I think it is absolutely vital to have the
correct title tracked for a journal; no matter how old it is, so that
academic referencing is not compromised and customer confusion is kept
to a minimum.

 

I'd like to hear other's experiences on this.  Also, if a new title is
added to a package, how long should it take for this information to be
added to a knowledge base - and should this be a proactive or reactive
process?

 

As ever the floor is yours ... if people want to email me off-list on
this topic, that's absolutely fine.

 

Thanks

Louise

 

Louise Cole

Senior Information Advisor (Collections)

Nightingale Centre, Kingston Hill Campus

Kingston University

Kingston-upon-Thames

Surrey

KT12 7LB

 

Email [log in to unmask]

Telephone 0208 547 8383

Fax 0208 547 7312

 

 


This email has been scanned for all viruses by the MessageLabs Email
Security System.