Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 15:47:18 -0600
From: "Kevil, L H." <KevilL@MISSOURI.EDU>
Subject: Verifying access to e-journals

Hello all,

Perhaps some of you would be willing to help me think through a problem.

Soon we will have a list of URLs for the many e-journals to which we have ip
access rights. Is there an easy way to automate the process of going through
the list and verifying that we do or do not in fact have access to these
e-journals? Our experience has been that publishers do no better a job
maintaining access to their e-journals than they do in supplying our paper
issues on time and without our needing to claim.

If we were to undertake this manually, we would doubtless have to go through
the entire list weekly in order to detect disruptions of service in a timely
manner. I am thinking there probably is a better way to do this, perhaps by
means of some kind of spider or crude agent technology. Any ideas for a
better mousetrap would be most gratefully received.

TIA and I will be more than happy to post a summary of private messages to
the list,

Hunter

L. Hunter Kevil,
Head, Serials Dept, Ellis Library,
(Soon-to-be Collection Development Librarian)
University of Missouri-Columbia,
Columbia, MO 65201
Voice:  573-884-8760
Fax:    573-884-5243
E-mail: KevilL@missouri.edu