Hi everybody,
I was looking around for recent JSTOR MARC record sets and not finding them. Yes there are some old ones on OCLC; I’d like them to be of fresher vintage. JSTOR does not offer them. I was told by JSTOR staff that there is no way to search for JSTOR-only records in OCLC; you have to find them title by title. Our cataloging staff don’t have much time to devote to cataloging JSTOR records on a title-by-title basis; they have higher priorities like working on the digital archives and downloading large MARC record sets.
If there are no recent JSTOR MARC record sets … why is that? I know that JSTOR adds titles occasionally to its collections, even the older ones, but this can be surmounted with supplements or updates. So many libraries have JSTOR collections, you’d think somebody (JSTOR, OCLC or a third party) could turn a little profit here with some kind of MARC record service that sends out supplements/updates occasionally.
Just wondering out loud.
Incidentally, our Metadata & Systems Librarian created a MARC record conversion app to assist with MARC record set loads. This is to do all the touching-up that the ILS can’t do, to avoid making staff touch hundreds or thousands of records individually. He is also teaching one of the cataloging staff to use Python and Django (a Python-based web framework) to edit his app so that she can create her own conversions. This is a real labor saving way of enhancing the catalog. It seems to be a forgone conclusion that Systems Librarians won’t teach programming to other non-systems staff, and non-systems staff will refuse to learn programming. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Diane Westerfield, Electronic Resources & Serials Librarian
Tutt Library, Colorado College
(719) 389-6661
(719) 389-6082 (fax)