We use the eSerials Holdings service with records from our EBSCO knowledgebase.  The OCLC reports are indicating about a 37% match rate (19500+ matches for over 52000 items; 30900+ unresolved). 50% sounds better, but still leaves lots to be desired.  Part of the problem, in looking at our title list, appears to be brief records supplied (esp. re. Lexis-Nexis "hldgs"), where there are really no points to match on.

We have complained about the quality of the records. That hasn't boosted the match rate.
We feel that the 37% match is better than none (or relatively few) before we set up this service.
There's certainly no way to do it manually.
We are happy to have some of our eholdings reflected in OCLC.
It's another place for our users to discover / access resource(s) that we provide.

On the other hand, it does seem that there should be a way for this service to achieve better results.

I'm also curious to know if anyone using any other MARC/KB service (Serials Solutions, EBSCO, SFX/MARCit) - with the eSerials holdings service is keeping track of the match rate and what you've found.

 - Birdie

On 11/17/2011 2:47 PM, Pennington, Buddy D. wrote:

We don’t do anything. My take on this is that the valuable “core” academic journals tend to fall into the resolved category and the bulk of the stuff in the unresolved category are serials that we don’t care all that much about. So why spend the time trying to get them into WorldCat? We have lots of other things to worry about.

 

I could be very wrong about this! To be honest, we haven’t looked at it that closely. Our attitude is that prior to Serials Solutions MARC records, less than 10% of our online serials were in the online catalog, let alone WorldCat. Now we have nearly 100% in our local catalog and roughly half in WorldCat with vastly reduced cataloging staff time involved. So we are taking the glass half full approach.

 

Buddy Pennington

Director of Collections and Access Management

University of Missouri - Kansas City

304 Miller Nichols Library

800 East 51st Street

Kansas City, MO  64110

816-235-1548

816-333-5584 (fax)

 

UMKC Libraries: Discovery. Knowledge. Empowerment.

 

From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Janet Lee-Smeltzer
Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2011 1:04 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: [SERIALST] OCLC eSerials Holdings

 

Apologies for cross-posting.

 

We load records from Serials Solutions for our electronic journals and update holdings in WorldCat using the eSerials Holdings service offered by OCLC.  I have recently gotten confirmation from OCLC support that a 50% match rate is the best we can expect (for a library of our size).  The November eSerials Holdings Service Summary Report  indicates that out of 47,239 of records processed, 24,025 were unresolved, i.e., no WorldCat records were matched for these titles to set our holdings.   I am interested in hearing from those, who use the same two services, if you are experiencing the same low matching rate and how you handle the unresolved records.  Manually review the unresolved records and update holdings?  Not worry about it and do nothing?

 

Thank you.

 

 

Janet Lee-Smeltzer
Head, Cataloging and Metadata Services
The University of Alabama Libraries
Box 870266
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0266
Phone: 205-348-6022
Fax: 205-348-6358
janet_leesmeltzer@yahoo.com


-- 
       Birdie MacLennan
       Bailey/Howe Library            
       University of Vermont         E-mail:  bmaclenn@uvm.edu
       538 Main Street                Phone:   802-656-2016
       Burlington, VT  05405, USA       Fax:   802-656-4038
 Library Professor/Director, Resource Description & Analysis Services
            Vermont Digital Newspaper Project Director