Cecelia Boone's request concerning how and whether to include holdings for
electronic serials in a union list touches on several points.  At the
CRIARL Union List of Serials (Consortium of Rhode Island Academic and
Research Libraries) we are still working on identifying all the problems,
and certainly have not arrived at consensus on any answers.

1) Does it make sense to include e-serials in a Union List, given actual
or potential license restrictions prohibiting the use of e-serial
materials for interlibrary loan?  It seems to me that this depends on how
a given Union List conceives of its users.  If they are primarily ILL
staffers, the answer is probably no.  On the other hand, a Union List
which is (or soon may be) available as a Web-PAC could soon find itself
with many other kinds of users.
        In addition, many field 856-hot links in bibliographic records
refer not only to full, licensed texts, but to information about the
serial title, tables of contents, editorial policies, etc.  Many
government-originated medical serial titles (e.g., some NIH titles) are
available without license restrictions since they are considered
"government documents" and thus not copyright.  It would seem a shame to
delete or suppress all this information from the public because of some
very real and very narrow license restrictions, restrictions which may,
however, change in time (for better or worse!).
        Holdings records (in III parlance, check-in records) for e-serials
are something else.  "Holdings" information tends strongly to suggest
physical possession on some medium.  What is held in a true e-serial
situation may be an authorized access point to a data-base elsewhere.
This information may be supplementary to the core serial information in
the bibliographic record, but may not justify a "holding" statement,
anymore than new issues of a true e-serial can be "checked in."  (The
situation in cases of electronically-available supplements to print or
CD-ROM formats, etc., is too various and sometimes bizarre to summarize,
but might warrant a Public Note on a holdings record or statement.)

2) At CRIARL we make no attempt to keep current URLS or e-serials holdings
information (since, per above, there may be no physical holding).  When we
mount our Web-PAC, we will have to warn the user that the URLs could well
be dead links.

3) I believe that an electronic access points should be provided in the
bibliographic record with a summary note containing relevant informaton if
the situation warrants it.  The whole context of e-serials is so fluid
right now that I doubt anyone can really legislate what should be done in
every case before-hand.  The over-riding issues of importance in
cataloging are accuracy and intelligibility,and this will vary in the
context of each institution, library PAC display settings, and the facts
of each case at hand.  Electronic access information supplementary to
physically-formatted items might well also be repeated briefly in holdings
records, since in some systems these records display on the lower half of
the first screen (e,g,, DRA?), but in other systems only when summoned,
(e.g., holdings or item option #1, e.g. III).

What problems have other Union Lists encountered?  This is an important
subject!  The full accessibility of every Union List serial title to every
Union List user has never been assured in most Union Lists, many of which
will carry some serial titles which may have access restrictions: e.g.,
special collections, preservation, etc.  Can Union List librarians on
SERIALST contribute to an evolving consensus?

Gavin Ferriby
Editor, CRIARL Union List of Serials
Consortium of Rhode Island Academic and Research Libraries
        (headquartered at Brown University)
Gavin_Ferriby@brown.edu