We are adding our call no., and in some cases, our holdings to our CD-ROM
databases--Academic Abstracts, Humanities Index, Social Sciences Index,
General Sciences Index, ABI Inform, BPO, and SSFT--and are discussing the
best way to handle those journals for which we have incomplete holdings.
There is not enough space on the holdings line and we don't have the staff
time to provide complete detailed holdings. We are currently compromising by
giving an open holdings statement, beginning with when our holdings start,
but we are running into problems with misleading the users into believing we
have everything from that point on, when in reality we do not always have
every issue. For example, if the database has a journal starting with
1984, and our holdings begin with 1986, the user sees something like:

                         [call no.]
                         Library has 1986-

However, we may be lacking one issue in 1989.

We are trying to provide "one-stop shopping" for our users, so they don't
have to always refer to our OPAC for every call no., but in order to
avoid misleading people, we are considering using a generic statement,
for example,

        See [OPAC] for holdings
or
        Library has incomplete holdings

or something similar. What wording do other libraries use in annotating
their CD-ROM databases with their holdings information? What difficulties
have you encountered? Of course, we would love to be able to have a
direct connection between the database and our OPAC, but it's not possible
with our VTLS system.

Please reply to the list. Thank you for any help you can give.

Marty Arvey (ffmma@vms.aurora.alaska.edu)
Rasmuson Library
University of Alaska Fairbanks