As chance would have it, this week I finished cataloging online versions
of 13 of the American Geophysical Union journals for our libraries. I
say 13 titles; in fact there were 6 titles plus the Journal of
geophysical research with its 7 sections. (Fortunately, our libraries
have chosen to purchase access to all sections of JGR, or I'd have had
additional problems).
I was able to find (and export) OCLC records for 6 of the JGR sections,
and had to create a new record for the 7th one, which began publication
only this year.
On AGU journals's web page (http://www.agu.org/journals/) all of their
journal publications are listed. Each section of JGR is prominently
shown as if they are separate titles.
My difficulty arose because of the fact that USF links from our OPAC
through SFX to the online resource. Because SFX is pretty much ISSN
driven, it has only a SINGLE record for the JGR--for ALL sections. This
SFX record, then, of necessity, has to link to the journal web page
(http://www.agu.org/journals/) rather than directly to the individual
sections/titles. This means that after arriving at the AGU journal's
web page, the user still has to scroll down to find their title and do
some more clicking.
Had there been an ISSN for each section, and SFX records for each
individual section, it would have simplified the cataloging and access,
and made things simpler for the user....
James Michael
Electronic Resources Cataloger
University of South Florida - Tampa Library
4202 East Fowler Ave.
LIB 122
Tampa, Fla. 33620
813-974-2453 (suncom 574-2453)
-----Original Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum
[mailto:SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU] On Behalf Of Eric Hellman
Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2005 4:25 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: [SERIALST] Opinions requested on Journal of geophysical
research ISSN practice
Here at Openly we've been studying how best to deal with AGU's Journal
of Geophysical Research in our ejournal management services.
As many of you probably know, AGU considers (or at one time
considered) this to be a single journal with a single ISSN 0148-0227,
but sections of the journal are marketed and delivered as separate
products, vis the "journals" web page:
J. Geophys. Res. - Atmos.
ISSN 0148-0227 Vol. 110, No. D17 2005 Sep 16
J. Geophys. Res. - Earth Surface
ISSN 0148-0227 Vol. 110, No. F2 2005 Apr-Jun
J. Geophys. Res. - Oceans
ISSN 0148-0227 Vol. 110, No. C8 2005 Aug 15
J. Geophys. Res. - Planets
ISSN 0148-0227 Vol. 110, No. E8 2005 Aug 25
J. Geophys. Res. - Solid Earth
ISSN 0148-0227 Vol. 110, No. B8 2005 Aug 10
J. Geophys. Res. - Space Phys.
ISSN 0148-0227 Vol. 110, No. A8 2005 Aug 1
At one time, separate ISSNs were assigned to the sections. AGU objected
to this and had these ISSNs "cancelled".
Our problem with this is how to express, in a library's electronic
holdings profile, that a library has access to only a section of this
journal. We can't do it by title, because a citation to an article may
only have the generic title, without the section- this is the preferred
citation style at AGU. It seems that the only reliable way to do it
would be to examine the volume number; this will be a bit messy.
My questions are
1. Is it common for libraries to have electronic full-text access to
only some sections of this title?
2. Are there other cases where journal publishers are adamant about not
having separate ISSNs for sections that are sold separately? (We have
been able to handle (not perfectly, alas) the sections of American
Journal of Physiology, which had ISSN confusion issues in the 70's.) 3.
Is there any formal guidance about this practice in the ISSN world?
I've been corresponding with the AGU on this, and I'd be interested to
here what serialists in libraries think about it.
Eric
--
Eric Hellman, President Openly Informatics,
Inc.
eric@openly.com 2 Broad St., 2nd
Floor
tel 1-973-509-7800 fax 1-734-468-6216 Bloomfield, NJ 07003
http://www.openly.com/1cate/ 1 Click Access To Everything
