I will follow Steve's lead and also make this my last comment to the distribution list, though I will be glad to continue to field individual questions and comments.

In a nutshell, it's clear that the adjacency of "CONSER" and "neutral" has caused some confusion. I tried to provide specific examples, and made the problem worse. When we say "CONSER neutral" we really mean "CONSER" *and* "neutral". We have multiple sources of records, and we have multiple record types. For CONSER records, at present we differentiate them into print, online, microform, CD-ROM, and (for better or worse) "neutral". In addition, we have NLM records, Serials Solutions-generated records, Gale records, Ulrich's records, and more. So, there was a 'source' (ie, CONSER, NLM, Gale, Ulrich's, etc.) and there was a 'mediatype' (online, neutral, print, CD-ROM, microfilm, etc.). The connection of those two terms has led to confusion.

I welcome ideas about other terms we could use, though I am not a fan of changing those terms on a regular basis to stay ahead of other uses of the same or similar terms that might come out in the future. We've been using these terms for the past six years, and until I tried to clarify their meaning, I don't think we'd had a lot of problems with their definition.

Also, as has been pointed out to me on the list and individually, my examples were less than perfect. While we are certainly not without blame, explanations I have received have identified errors in some of those records that likely caused us to make mistakes (which we certainly made) in our assignment of those titles.

So, to sum up:
- Our "CONSER neutral" records are CONSER records for print resources. We attempt to differentiate between those that have "Print" qualifiers and those that do not. I don't believe that we've ever represented these records as non-format-specific records.
- I tried to provide some specific examples, but instead those highlighted some errors within the database and within those records. I've corrected those errors in our knowledgebase, and hope that those who can will correct errors within the records themselves.

I hope that this message is more successful in describing the way that we manage these records. I welcome comments off-list from those who would like more detail or have further questions, comments, or concerns.

Peter Mc

Peter McCracken, MLS
Co-founder & Director of Research, Serials Solutions
peter@serialssolutions.com
(607) 262-0941 - cell

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