Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2001 15:33:24 -0400 From: "Sitko, Michelle" <sitko@ES.MARYWOOD.EDU> Subject: Electronic Serials Management (Michelle Sitko) At a recent Electronic Serials Management Demo Day at PALINET in Philadelphia, regional librarians were introduced to three innovative serials management tools at discounted prices to members: 1) Serials Solutions http://www.serialssolutions.com <http://www.serialssolutions.com> , 2) Journal WebCite http://www.JournalWebCite.com <http://www.JournalWebCite.com> and 3) TDNet http://www.tdnet.com <http://www.tdnet.com> Serials Solutions, being the leader in the industry and the first to start this type of product struck me as a reliable and inexpensive alternative to organizing and managing your library's titles. They have been servicing libraries for over a year now and currently have over 200 partner libraries. Serials Solutions seemed comparable to JournalWebCite's Journal List-LIGHT product. However, because of SS's searching and some reporting limitations we, at Marywood University, are planning to give JournalWebCite's (JWC) slightly higher priced Journal List- STANDARD product a try for a few basic reasons. Without going into too much detail (and please correct me if I am making any misleading assertions), Journal WebCite will allow our patrons to search print, microform, and electronic full text titles under broad subject headings (they also plan to add Ulrich's Subject headings--which is better than no established taxonomy), whereas Serials Solutions (SS) is currently designed to be approached with a specific citation in hand. JWC's STANDARD product also has more useful and readily available statistical reporting capabilities, including one that allows you to easily ascertain overlap of titles in various aggregate products, which will aid us in future collection management decisions. It can link to your OPAC "if" it supports static urls. If not, it will at least go to the search screen. Unlike the other two, this product is maintained on THEIR server (which is a form of outsourcing that your institution may/may not endorse). They have not experienced problems with regard to downtime but pledge we will be credited for a full 24 hours if they are down for more than15 minutes...which leads me to remind everyone that they are a fledging company. JWC also offers a higher end product called Journal List-ULTIMATE but it is way out of our price range. We are hoping to have JWC in place for the upcoming Fall semester. For the price, this evolving product seems worth a try if it does all that it promises. We're willing to give it a go as it won't break our piggy bank nor our hearts if we were to discover something newer, better, and affordable on the market down the line. Also, since we are a smaller institution that offers access to a considerable number of aggregate products, basing their price on FTE seems to work in our favor. In any case, this will be a DEFINITE improvement over what we've been doing over the past year and a half, i.e. culling excel files of titles from aggregate product websites that we subscribe to, merging them, and arduously de-duping them to produce one integrated list of print, microform, and electronic titles. Seems like with a little bit of work and ingenuity, WE could have developed this product ourselves if only we had the time! (which is one of the reasons this product holds so much promise for us). Of course, I wish we could consider a product such as TDNet that promises to offer a customized FULL-service journals management service. They claim to handle remote access links to journal sites as well as negotiate site license agreements for institutions and consortia (though one is left wondering about how this can actually all "really" work on an individual/ institutional basis), work with protected IP addresses, make payments to publishers, load any subject taxonomy you wish, including LC Subject Headings, etc.etc.--but this product comes with a substantially higher price tag. TDNet apparently began in August 2000, and then spun off of Tel Dan (an Israeli company that began in the mid 70's) to form an independent company in February 2001. I understand their primary customers have been corporate, medical centers, government, hi-tech, academic libraries, consortia and information centers in Europe, Israel, Japan and Latin American countries and only now are trying to break into the US market. As indicated in a few earlier emails on this subject, I also hope this becomes a regular topic of discussion on our list. Given the speed of developments in technology, there seem to be fewer and fewer readily available guideposts to follow. The sharing of your insights and experiences on these timely topics will, hopefully, help us all make more informed and cost-effective decisions with regard to this sort of much needed service! ***** *** ***** *** ***** *** ***** *** Michelle Sitko Coordinator of Collection Management Services/Serials Learning Resources Center Marywood University 2300 Adams Avenue Scranton, PA 18509-1598 Voice: (570) 340-6034 Fax: (570) 961-4769 Email: sitko@ac.marywood.edu University URL: http://www.marywood.edu <http://www.marywood.edu/>
