Hello. I've had a request to post responses to the list regarding the Gold Rush Mgmt system. I've asked permission from all three respondents below and they have agreed to let me share their posts with the list. Thanks, Julia Todd ---------- We have been using Gold Rush for over a year, however, we just implemented Gold Rush Linker (OpenURL) a few months ago. At this point we use all aspects of Gold Rush, however, the Subscription area is used the least. The article linking feature (OpenURL) is working really well. We don't have a ton of online journals but this service is getting people to our online full text much quicker and more consistently than ever before. We believe that Gold Rush is helping us use our resources to a greater extent. We have loaded two different lists of our own into Gold Rush, one is a list of those journals that we get online but are not a part of an aggregation. The titles represent things we get free with print or other subscriptions that are online only and directly with a publisher. The second list we loaded was our currently received print journals. The addition of these two local lists has been invaluable and once again, helped us to better use our very expensive resources! It took quite a bit of time for me to compile these lists the first time. Every time you embark on a catalog related project it is amazing how many issues you find. I had to work with our technical services department to work out problems with our journal records in our catalog, however, that work will only have to be done once. I decided that all of the titles included in these two local lists would come from our catalog. This way, we just update things in the catalog and then output those records to update Gold Rush. We have a III system and I can give you more details on how I formed the final lists, if you are interested. We use the reports for a variety of things, collection development, consortial comparisons, ISSN and URL checks, etc. There are many reports available and we have had a variety of staff use them for a variety of applications. Between the reports and the public interface to the database, we can get almost any piece of information we need. I am very pleased with Gold Rush. They recently released a version of the software that deals with embargos, moving walls and other date oddities which has made the product fit our needs perfectly. The title lists in Gold Rush are updated frequently and if there has ever been an issue with a list, all I do is let the Gold Rush folks know and the list gets updated. The customer service has been outstanding. I hope this helps. Please let me know if you would like any more details. Melissa Stockton Electronic Services Librarian Regis University Libraries Phone: 303-964-5213 Fax: 303-964-5497 Email: mstockto@regis.edu ---------- Hi, Julia-- University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, and OU-Tulsa (where I am) have been using GoldRush for about six months. I love it--and our students love it, too. They had no idea we had so much available electronically. We haven't been able to use a great many databases with Article Linker--because of the way the providers identify individual articles, not because of GoldRush. Linker works fairly smoothly with EbscoHost, JSTOR and Blackwell Synergy. It just depends on how the provider sets things up. (I recently looked at other linkers, and they don't work all that smoothly, either.) You can add your paper holdings. You just put them into an excel file and email them to tech support. But titles have to be identified by ISSN. The excel file we've been using to produce our paper/html list doesn't have ISSNs, and we just haven't gotten around to spend the time to research 1300 ISSNs. I think some of the Colorado libraries have loaded their paper holdings--and it's something I really intend to do. Soon. So you should be able to see an example of how it looks to the user. There are three things I really, really like about GoldRush that I didn't see in other Electronic Serials Management packages we reviewed. One is the ability to search journals by subject. I can make a list of the journals we have full-text in...say...computer science instantly. This was one feature that our students and faculty thought was very important. A second is the ability to compare titles in two or more databases, to see how many unique titles you are really buying when you choose something new. And if you have your paper holdings (which is considered to be your own personal 'database' in GoldRush)loaded, you can compare titles you take in print with other packages. I personally like the fact that I can update titles and holdings myself and have the changes take place instantly. No waiting a month for the next upload. It's easy--but it does take time to do--especially at the beginning. The tech support is as fast and responsive as any I've ever dealt with. And when you point out a bug--they fix it. Usually today. No, they haven't paid me to say nice things. I just like the product, and price-wise, I think it's very reasonable. Did I answer most of your questions? If not, I'll be glad to go on and on... Junie C. Janzen Technical Services Librarian OU-Tulsa ---------- Hello. I am reviewing the Gold Rush Electronic Resource Management product and wondered if you could tell me your assessment of the tool? Overall we are very pleased with Gold Rush. We had two inhouse databases--one for subscription management and one for link management. Both were Access databases and did not have a lot of features. Nonetheless, it took lots of staff time to keep them (particularly our link management database) updated. We were getting Serials Solutions data every 60 days, but our IT people had to manipulate that and insert it into our existing holdings database. Do you use the article linker feature? Yes, not across the board, but we are using it in all of the FirstSearch databases and in our SciSearch and Social SciSearch databases (vendor=Los Alamos National Lab). Does it work well? Yes, except when there is a difference in ISSNs. When a vendor reports a different ISSN than what GR retains as the "key", the Linker will not find the article or article source. The thing to be aware of is every vendor pretty much does things their own way. FirstSearch was very easy to set up--all we did was drop in our BaseURL and the URL to our Linker image. LANL configured it for us, so we just sent them the information and then tested it before going live. Other vendors require that you go in and define the tags you want pulled from the citation to send in the OpenURL--those are not as straightforward and require more staff time. We have postponed doing those until next year. How do you use the reports and which do you use? The reports that I think you are referring to are in the Reports Module. It is very intuitive--it involves clicking and selecting. Our subject selectors like to use the comparison reports that compare different products and show title overlap and uniqueness. Also, there is a multiple database comparison report that is very powerful (but is processed on a Gold Rush server and then e-mailed to an account specified). Can you integrate your paper Journals into Gold RusH? Yes, we have not done this--although I believe some of the Colorado Alliance folks have. If so, is it time consuming--how do you integrate items from the OPAC? How often are the title lists updated? Depends on the lists--I do not have the schedule for all lists. I know that the bigger aggregator lists are done more frequently than smaller publisher journal lists. If we find something is out of date, we e-mail support and ask them to put it in the queue. There is one person at Gold Rush that is in charge of list loading and it is a continuous process. Any information you might be able to provide would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time. You are welcome. I am getting ready to leave for vacation tomorrow, but I will be back in early December if you need to chat or follow-up. Regards, Twila p.s. If they would like to look at our public interface, you can point them to: http://unm.goldrush.coalliance.org/index.cfm?inst_code=UNM (they will only be able to access the OA articles--others are IP authenticated). Twila Firmature Resource Acquisitions University Libraries MSCO5 3020 1-University of New Mexico Albuquerque NM 87131 505.277.0277 twila@unm.edu
