Carol D. Green <Carol.Green@usm.edu> wrote:

>> We currently subscribe to two online services, EBSCOHost and
>> ProQuest Online, both of which provide access to around 1500
>> journals in electronic format, some of which are full text.  Both
>> services provide a list of the journals indexed which is accessible
>> through their websites.  Individual titles from the list are not
>> accessible in our local online catalog.
>>
>> To serve the user, we feel the e-journal titles need to be in the
>> online catalog with a "pointer" or URL to EBSCOHost or ProQuest
>> or sometimes both.  We want to be able to delete titles easily in the
>> event of cancellation of a subscription.  Rather than searching OCLC
>> and exporting MARC records if available or doing full original cataloging,
>> we propose the creation of a local record with a minimal number of fields
>> necessary to direct the user to the online services where that journal is
>> found.  We really don't want to "hang" the URL on the print record if there
>> is one.
>>
>> Is anyone else working with the same situation?  Are you adding the titles
>> from the online services to your catalog or not?  Any comments or
>> ideas would be welcome.  Thanks!

We have added URLS to many of our OPAC print serial records for those
titles for which we have online access.   We have also downloaded and
catalogued records for true electronic journals as opposed to
electronic EDITIONS.  We also download records for the various online
databases we subscribe to and add 856 fields that direct patrons to our
web page where password/ID authentication filters are in place for
specific licensed resources.  Once our subscription with Project Muse
has been finalized we anticipate adding URLs to the separate records in
our OPAC to the titles in this online collection.  We would probably
have to reconsider this policy if subsribing to EBSCOHost or another
provider of that magnitude.  Although we highlight both e-journals and
databases in our web pages, we expect that once we have a critical mass
of titles in our OPAC we will rely on it for access to electronic
journals.  Maintaining a useful list of e-journals in a web page and
cataloging them for our web pac is a duplication of effort we cannot
long afford.

We are in a state wide University consortia and feel that having
multiple records for various formats (paper, microform, online) would
be a disservice to our users, not to mention additional work for our
staff.   We were only too happy to embrace the CONSER recommendations
for appending 856 fields to our existing print records.  Of course in a
case where we know the content of the online version is significantly
different than the paper version, we do download a separate record.
The New York Times is a good example of this.

As a regional depository, we also have to address the issue of
incorporating enhanced GPO records (with added 856, 530, etc. fields)
in our database.  This involves overlaying existing records which takes
some tweaking  to accomplish within our Innovative system without loss
of critical attached records.  A whole other exciting chapter....:)

SharonQuinn Fitzgerald
University of Maine
<SharonQuinn_Fitzgerald@UMIT.MAINE.EDU>