From: David Goodman <dgoodman@Princeton.EDU>
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 13:19:16 -0500
Subject: Re: Adding holdings on OCLC for ejournals -- Steve Oberg

Such is the traditional fate of pioneers.

If you regarded the material as suitable for your collection policy,
it was indeed your obligation, and it is the obligation of every library
which regards the material as apprpriate to do the same. It is of course
not appropriate for libraries to add to their local records
everything that is available over the internet (or even the entire
portion of it that OCLC has cataloged),  but most good libraries are
trying to add selected relevant material. When the rest of the
libraries do their job as well as you do, there will
be no further difficulties of this sort.

However, the record should, I hope, clearly state that the material is
available  free over the internet. If it does, then the libraries
requesting it are not doing a proper job of searching their outgoing ILL
requests.  When they do, the job of good ILL departments like yours'
will be much easier.

I typically respond to such requests  not by printing and sending the
item, and not just by saying unavailable and passing the same problem on
to the next lending library, but by printing out the record, marking the
link, mailing or faxing or arieling it to the requestor,
and entering the request as filled. If you charge for filling requests,
I would have no hesitation in charging for it. That might satisfy your
ILL dept.

Please do not let the backwardness of others drag you back to their level.
My personal opinion,

Dr. David Goodman
Palmer School of Library & Information Science, Long Island University
dgoodman@princeton.edu

----- Original Message -----
 > Subject: Adding holdings on OCLC for ejournals
 > Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 09:08:20 -0500
 > From: "Oberg, Steve" <STOBERG@TAYLORU.EDU>
 >
 >
 > Pardon me if this question has already been thoroughly discussed
 > or if
 > the answer is obvious to some...but I'll ask it of you all anyway.
 > Recently we began a project to integrate free, scholarly, peer-
 > reviewedejournals into our web-based periodical list and our
 > online catalog.
 > In most cases there is copy for these titles available on OCLC.
 >
 > I had assumed an obligation on my part to add our holdings symbol to
 > any record we exported from OCLC.  However, within literally a few
 > days, we suddenly started getting ILL requests for articles from these
 > freely available ejournals.  For a variety of reasons this is not at
 > all desirable from our ILL department's standpoint and they simply
 > don't even want to receive requests like this at all.  I was asked to
 > remove our holdings symbol from the records I had already used,
 > and to
 > not add our holdings symbol to new records that I added into our
 > onlinecatalog.  Some people I've consulted have said this isn't
 > ok, some have
 > said this
 > approach is fine.
 >
 > One thing I have found in OCLC's documentation that pertains to
 > this is
 > the following principles statement:
 > http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/cooperation/principles.shtm
 > That's not to say there isn't something clearly stated elsewhere, it's
 > just that I haven't found it yet.
 >
 > What is the correct approach?  Your guidance or insights would be
 > helpful.
 >
 > Steve
 >
 > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 > Steve Oberg -- Electronic Resources Librarian
 > Taylor University -- Zondervan Library
 > http://www.tayloru.edu/library/
 >

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