First, I greatly favor creating an aggregator neutral approach for
integrating resources.  Locally, there is no way that I am going to put
four records for Medline into our catalog.  I used to work in reference
and I can attest that patrons and reference librarians don't like to
scroll to the next screen, much less try to figure out which of several
almost identical records they should use.  More clicking equals more
frustration and a tendency to bypass the catalog altogether.

The issues that I see for using an aggregator neutral approach for
integrating resources stem from the fact that databases are much more
likely to have variant contents than are serials.  While several
providers may give the same content, e.g., an index database, another
provider may merge other content and features into its presentation of
the data.  Sometimes this is obvious enough to make it evident that this
is a new work.  However, sometimes this is not so obvious.  The problem
will be where to draw the lines.  After all, we are talking about
integrating resources, works that gradually change without sharp
divisions.

Are the add-ons minor supplements to the main content?  Are they
maintained separately and just have a metasearch presentation with the
main content?  Or is the content that was once separate now a part of
something else?  If these changes go across all providers together, this
is not such an issue.  That's what integrating resources do.  But what
if these add-ons or changes occur only in one or some providers, but not
in others?  When do you know to create a new record?  What is a big
enough change to distinguish different presentation or co-presentation
with other content from the emergence of a new work?

I think this will be the real difficulty in defining how to approach
aggregator neutral records for integrating resources.  That said, I
think it is absolutely necessary that we do figure out a way to make
this work.  FRBRization of our OPACs may eventually help, but we need a
way to deal with this now.

Kimberly Montgomery
Foreign Languages / Electronic Resources Cataloger
University of Central Florida Libraries
kmontgom@mail.ucf.edu