When I was investigating ERM products, I had the opportunity to set up
an open-source ERM. While doing that, I had the "pleasure" of dealing
with creating and loading coverage data, based on files from our
vendors. Although we left Serials Solutions for a new vendor, I have
great respect for what they try to accomplish.

We did not do a formal assessment of the coverage situation, but here
are some things that we observed when we were investigating ERM
products.
+ The basic coverage date that is provided by publishers and aggregators
is all over the map. Some is very good, including title tracing. Others
cannot even get the dates within their own interface to match.
+ The vendor that we were using, Serials Solutions, did a good job of
getting it right, when you consider what they have to work with.
+ There were times, when for whatever reason our vendor would not make
corrections. We just had to live with it.

In our library, we do not have the staffing with the required background
to systematically match coverage, to title runs, to entitlements. We
have our current vendor (not one of the ones mentioned below) make
corrections. We find that our data tends to be somewhat cleaner with our
current vendor.

Daniel Hoyte
Senior Systems Technician
Chapman University Leatherby Libraries
(714) 532-7745
hoyte@chapman.edu
AIM/Yahoo IM: chaphoyte

/(bb|[^b]{2})/ that is the Question

-----Original Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum
[mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Cahill, Helen
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2008 5:08 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: [SERIALST] Coverage loads - quality of data

Hello all,

I wonder if there is anybody out there who has assessed the quality of
data being offered by the coverage load vendors? I'm principally
interested in Serials Solutions, Ebsco A-Z, and III's CASE product, but
would also welcome comments on any others.

Here is an example from the coverage loads for ACM: "SIGART bulletin"
was published 1990-1998 with previous and later titles. There is (to my
cataloguing mind) a problem over the coverage that is available from SS,
EAZ and CASE: they list the coverage for SIGART bulletin to be
1970-1998, and don't have any listing for the previous title. I've
looked in a few catalogues (randomly) and it seems to me that libraries
are simply accepting that (wrong) coverage data. How do your patrons
find the online version of "SIGART newsletter"?

Has that bothered anybody out there enough to have attempted to get
these vendors to properly match the coverage to the title runs? Or, are
we so seriously understaffed world-wide that we can't either do the
checking & correcting or pressure the vendors to produce accurate
information? Has anybody ever offered to clean up the data offered by
these vendors to benefit all others?

I'm feeling like this is going to develop into one of those Publisher vs
Vendor, IT vs Cataloguer debates, but I'm always mindful of what our
library patrons want to see when they look on our OPACs.

Thanks!

Helen Cahill
Cataloguer, Collection Services
Massey University Library
Private Bag 11054
Palmerston North 4442
NEW ZEALAND

Ph: + 64 6 350 5799 ext 7876
Fax: + 64 6 350 5692
emai: H.Cahill@massey.ac.nz<mailto:H.Cahill@massey.ac.nz>
http://library.massey.ac.nz