Tracie J. Mineo [eisel@DUQ.EDU] wrote:

>        Here at Duquesne University we were wondering if anyone out there
>has purchased any of the MARC records for sale by Bell & Howell for the
>titles in the ProQuest databases? If so have you had any problems? What
>are some of the pros and cons of doing this?
>
>        When we first began cataloging our electronic journals it was
>decided that we would use separate records for our print and electronic
>titles. Bell & Howell has decided to use the print version of each record.
>We are debating what some of the problems could be for us.

We purchased and loaded approximately 1800 ProQuest MARC records in early
December.  We have also decided to use the 1 record approach and had
previously loaded MARC records for EBSCOHost databases.  We had no trouble
loading the records into our INNOPAC catalog, but if you review
authorities daily in INNOPAC you may want to load these records on a
weekend day when no other records are being loaded so you can run that
report separately from other new records and work on it as time allows.

Since we are using the 1 record approach, as soon as we loaded the records
we put them in a review file and suppressed them from the public catalog.
If we already have a record in the catalog for the print title we copy and
paste the ProQuest URL into that record and use a function key to insert a
public note in the 856 field. We've kept the ProQuest record suppressed
unless we don't already have a print record.  In that case, we unsuppress
the ProQuest record and add the public note to the 856 field.  We are also
creating checkin records to indicate holdings, which are in the ProQuest
856 field, but don't display to the public from that field.

If you want to see an example here's the url for our catalog:
http://library.uncwil.edu/

Try a journal title search for Women & Therapy - this is the ProQuest MARC
record.  For an example of a title for which we had a print record and
used the ProQuest url, search for journal title Academy of Management
Review. Of course you won't be able to link to the database without being
an authorized user, but you can see what the records look like.

I've only noticed a couple of problems. The ProQuest url takes you to a
set of citations for each journal but there is no way to further refine
the search by keyword, author, etc.  I've been told this will be possible
in an enhancement later this summer.  The second problem is with copying
and pasting the url, and this is only a problem if you use the 1-record
approach.  It is long, and unlike other journal urls, there are several
unique characters for each title embedded throughout the url, so copying &
pasting can be difficult due to line wraps and spaces.  It would be nice
to have a shorter url that could be put on a function key, with the ISSN
being the only variation that could be easily copied & pasted.

Arlene Hanerfeld, Associate University Librarian for Technical & Collection
Services
Randall Library, UNC Wilmington
601 S. College Rd.
Wilmington, NC 28403-3297
hanerfelda@uncwil.edu
910 962-3691 (voice); 910 962-3078(fax)