Hi

Over the last few years the need to add e-resources (journals/books) to 
our library catalogue has grown. The primarily reason being users expect 
(understandably) to find books and journals in the catalogue, and that 
includes online copies.

This has seen the way we use our catalogue change, from primarily adding 
individual records as we purchase items, to trying to add records in 
bulk from various third party systems.

These third party systems include the link resolver (for journal 
records), ebook suppliers and (experimentally) repository software (for 
theses).

I imagine many are in the same boat as us, we want to do this in a 
scalable way, we don't want to be editing individual records by hand 
when we could be looking at a very large number of records both for 
journals and - as/if usage takes off - ebooks.

For this to work, it requires high quality (MARC) records from 
suppliers, and LMS (ILS) vendors adapting their systems for this change 
in behaviour. For example, it may have been reasonable in the past for 
an LMS supplier to presume that large numbers of records would not need 
to be regularly suppressed/dropped, though with ever changing journal 
bundles this may be normal practice in the future.

Furthermore, just to add confusion, next generation web catalogues can 
search multiple sources. The assumption that 'public web catalogue' 
reflects the 'LMS catalogue' (i.e. what is in one is in the other) may 
no longer apply. Should e-content be kept out of the LMS but made 
seamlessly available to users using new web interfaces (Primo, 
Aquabrowser, etc etc)?

This seems like quite a big area, and a change in direction, with 
questions, and yet I haven't seen much amounts of discussion (Of course, 
this may well be due to a bad choice of mailing lists/blogs/articles).

Are others grappling with this sort of thing?

Anyone else wishing they could import their entire online journal 
collection with a few clicks but find dodgy records (which we may for!) 
and fussy library systems turn it in to a very slow process?
And not quite sure how to keep them all in sync?

Would love to hear from you.

Who else has all their e-journals on the catalogue? Was it quick? Do you 
exclude free journals etc?

Thanks
Chris

-- 
Chris Keene                                     [log in to unmask]
Technical Development Manager                   Tel (01273) 877950
University of Sussex Library
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/library/

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