-------- Original Message --------
Subject: A Database Maintenance Problem of Electronic Journals
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 13:42:04 -0500
From: Iris Lee <ilee@umbc.edu>

If this problem was discussed before, please excuse the redundancy.

UMBC Library currently has gained access to more than 700 e-journals,
and we have gradually been cataloging these titles.  One of the already
cataloged titles -- "Environmental Science and Technology: News and
Notes" -- became defunct this year.  Deciding on how to indicate this
change in our online catalog, we envisioned that a more general problem
would occur very soon; that is, should we delete from our online catalog
a title to which we stop subscribing.

Suppose we had subscribed to an e-journal for the last two years, but
have stopped the subscription due to lack of funding this year.
However, we might get enough funding to resume our subscription two
years from now.  Should we delete the title from our catalog this year
and re-catalog it when we resume the subscription?

Since our library's database is a part of the global database of the
Univeristy System of Maryland, deleting a title involves purging it from
both our local database and the global one.  Further, re-cataloging
repeats our efforts.  This approach therefore is surely labor intensive.

A few publishers, such as JSTOR, do provide access to any back issues to
which institutions had subscribed.  In these cases, we can put a closed
entry in the summary holdings and still keep the title in our catalog.
Upon resuming the subscription, we can change the closed entry back into
an open one.  By so doing, our library patrons will get correct holdings
information.  But, whether or not this policy will become a trend among
publishers is UNKNOWN.

Any thoughts about this database maintenance issue?  We would appreciate
any input from you.

Thanks in advance,
Iris