I agree with the others that it is totally impractical to create an
order record for every title in a package. What do the acquisitions
staff "need" this information for? What do they do with it? Whoever
is making spending decisions should be able to use another method to
compute costs and usage and so forth.

Since you are getting MARC records for each title, you could put a
local field in those MARC records that indicates what package the
journal is a part of, and staff could pull up the list that way. I do
that for some of our packages, such as JSTOR. I use a series tracing.
Nobody searches that way but me, but they could if they wanted to.
However, not all of our e-journals have MARC records.

There are some cases where we have kept individual order records for
titles in packages. Our Blackwell journal consortial arrangement, for
example, required that we keep all of the subscriptions we already
had, and then we could get all of the rest of the Blackwell titles
for a single additional price. So we left those existing order
records in there, and put in a note. But the rest of the Blackwell
titles that we got with the package did not get individual records.

Perhaps if the Acquisitions people could actually try using SFX and
could see how to get that information, they would be ok with not
seeing it in the acquisitions module.

Pat Thompson

At 11:03 AM 5/11/2009, Glasson, Patricia A wrote:
>Hi Barbara,
>
>It's a huge amount of work, and to me it seems unnecessary; but no one
>has been able to convince acquisitions to stop doing it. They insist
>that it's not enough to have order records just for the package itself.
>I showed them our JSTOR account information, where it's easy to see a
>list of titles we subscribe to, but they don't think that's enough,
>either. I was hoping to find some support from other libraries that
>could be used to help make the case.
>
>Thanks for your response, every comment helps!
>
>Patty Glasson
>Serials Cataloging Specialist
>Purdue University
>765-494-2811
>-----Original Message-----
>From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum
>[mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Barbara Pope
>Sent: Monday, May 11, 2009 11:34 AM
>To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
>Subject: Re: [SERIALST] Order records for e-journals
>
>Hi, Patricia.  This sounds like a lot of work to keep up with.  JSTOR
>does not have a lot of titles, but do you do this with other databases,
>like from Ebsco, Gale, etc., where the databases gives you access to
>thousands of journals?  Journal titles change frequently, so you
>information in the acquisitions module would have to change frequently
>as well.  I am interested in hearing more about this.  Please post to
>the list.
>
>Barbara Pope
>Pittsburg State University
>Pittsburg KS  66762
>
>Glasson, Patricia A wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > We're wondering how other libraries handle large e-journal packages
>such
> > as JSTOR in their acquisitions module.
> >
> > It has been the policy here to create an order record for every title
>in
> > each package. This is done so that acquisitions staff can determine
>the
> > source of each e-journal and see a list of titles included in each
> > package.
> >
> > We use SFX and are implementing MARCit!, Ex Libris' MARC record
>service
> > for e-journals. The new workflow makes it difficult to get an order
> > record on every e-journal title, and our systems administrator thinks
> > questions about order source and package content can be determined
>using
> > SFX. But our acquisitions staff want to be able to see that
>information
> > within the acquisitions module and are not comfortable with the idea
>of
> > abandoning order records for every e-journal title.
> >
> > Any advice, suggestions, cautions, etc., on the pros and cons of order
> > records for e-journals would be much appreciated.
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > Patty Glasson
> > Serials Cataloging Specialist
> > Purdue University
> > 765-494-2811
> >
> >
> >

Patricia R. Thompson
Assistant University Librarian for Resource Management Services
duPont Library
University of the South
Sewanee, TN 37383
931-598-1657
pthompso@sewanee.edu