We just recently purchased an A to Z service and it has been a nightmare. We had a home-grown browsable list that could not be supported and the service we have now offers some limited search capabilities.
I really keyed in to Charley’s statement that lists worked great when we had a handful of titles; yes, it was a novelty and we were proud for our patrons to see our list. But I wonder why we put all this effort
into an A to Z when we could include these in our catalog. I know it takes work and I know that there are technical considerations involved with linking electronic resources, but I have great faith that these can be resolved (we have a great technology person)
and it seems to me that cataloging would not be much more work than the work I’m doing in the A to Z.
The nightmare has been that we have to download a gazillion resources, suppress those we don’t use, and verify (again) access to them. This is no small task and we have linking concerns because of our proxy
settings (which I do not claim to understand.) And, in the end, we have LIMITED searching capabilities. I feel like I’m spinning my wheels, reinventing our wheel.
We’ve discussed including the print, but we just did a big project to update the holdings in the catalog and it’s not easy to export the holdings in sensible form. It just seems to me that we’re not considering
that what we’re doing is the best use of our time.
Thanks,
Mary
Mary Williams (mwill108@uthsc.edu)
Serials Librarian
Room 250
Library and Biocommunications Center
University of Tennessee Health Science Center
877 Madison Avenue, Room 250
Memphis, TN 38163
Phone: (901) 448-5154
FAX: (901) 448-5402
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu]
On Behalf Of Charles Pennell
Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2011 10:33 AM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Re: [SERIALST] including print holdings in journal A-Z list
We have our own home-grown ERMS that we call e-Matrix, that grabs print and electronic serial metadata from our Sirsi ILS and combines it with holdings and vendor data from
Serials Solutions every night to create both our Journal Finder and Database tools for public consumption, as well as a serial management tool for staff. While we have some browse ("title begins with") capability, it is not used as heavily as keyword search
simply because starting browse at any point brings up more entries than anyone can parse! Try a "title begins with" search for "C" and you'll see what I mean. You'll get 9700 results to browse through. A-Z lists worked great when libraries had only a handful
of titles, but they aren't terribly useful at an institution of our size. To try it out, go to
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/journals/
Charley Pennell
Principal Cataloger for Continuing Resources
North Carolina State University Libraries
>>> Kathleen Dougherty <KDougherty@SUNO.EDU> 9/21/2011 9:03 PM >>>
Thanks very much to everyone who responded to my previous question about tracking usage of current serial issues. The responses were so helpful I thought I’d throw another question out to the list
J
We have EBSCO A-Z, which currently lists online titles only. I was wondering if many libraries include print holdings in their A-Z lists, and if so, how often they update them?
Thanks.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kate Dougherty
Electronic Resources & Government Documents Librarian
Leonard S. Washington Memorial Library
Southern University at New Orleans
6400 Press Drive
New Orleans, LA 70126
504-286-5222