Yale University Library Collection Development Council

Survey on Providing Access to Serial Titles Within Aggregator Databases

1. Does your institution currently license full-text e-serials via aggregators such as Lexis-Nexis, ABI/Inform, etc.?
x yes
no

2. Which access method are you using now? (Check all appropriate)
x A. Lists of titles on web sites
x B. Single record approach
x C. Separate records
D. 510 field added to print record
E. Holdings attached to print record
F. None of the above
G. Comments

Generally . . .A, B, C.
A. We use lists of titles on web sites. Many lists.
B. We don't usually follow the single record approach, per se, but when we make a new record for the online version of resource that we also have in print we do add fields (just a 530, 776, and 856 usually) to the corresponding record for the print version. We do this so that readers using our catalog who find the print title will see at a glance that an online version is available. Our librarians with direct experience of our reader's needs insisted on this as a necessary part of our policy on catalog access to e-resources. Of course readers get no details about such things as e-version coverage, access rights, or systems/access requirements, etc. For that, they need to use the full record for the e-version of the resource.
C. We create separate records in most cases for e-resources. Exceptions include materials cataloged by GPO and processed here by staff in our Gov. Docs. Center, and some journal titles accessible via an OVID interface to a database and do not have stable URLs that link to individual titles.
G. Comments. The fact that we are using multiple access records may be due in large part to our uncertainty, our readers' uncertainty, and the publisher's uncertainty about how such material best fits with our and our readers' needs. But I think it also reflects that our readers' have a variety of needs that call for a variety of responses.
For example, alphabetical or subject/alphabetical lists of resources are effective tools in some situations and are, of course, a time- honored tool as well. Annotated lists with a well-focused subject orientation are perhaps the best example of this. For an example at Yale, see the Journals, Magazines, and Newspapers (full-text) section of the Search guide in film studies at http://www.library.yale.edu/humanities/film/journals.html
The journal, Journal of Film Preservation, is in that list, has a separate record for the online version in our online catalog and has a 530, 776, and 856 in the record for the print version.

3. Which access method would you most like to employ in your institution? (Check one item)
A. Lists of titles on web sites
B. Single record approach
C. Separate records
D. 510 field added to print record
E. Holdings attached to print record
x F. None of the above
G. Comments

We like A, B, and C. We are most likely to employ lists, links in the record for the print title, and a separate record for the online version. Lists of titles such as those described above will continue to be necessary and useful to our readers. I don't see changes in MARC and AACR leading to swift changes in our need to use both the single record and the separate record approaches in our online catalogs.

4. My institution would be willing to: (Check all appropriate)
x A. Work with CONSER libraries to create and maintain sets of records using either the single or separate record approaches
x B. Explore the possibility of working with publishers to create metadata
x C. Purchase sets of records
D. Comments

A. We are not a CONSER library though we have been in the past. I don't think we'd be interested in the single record approach since our local consensus (reference staff, selectors, catalogers, etc.) is that such records are inadequate to our needs and the needs of the readers we serve. But a shared, standardized, and high quality project to catalog serial e-resources would be highly desirable and we would seriously consider participation.
B. Yes. I believe we have attempted to educate and influence aggregators through our NERL consortium licensing arrangements. We think that providing not only full-text of e-journals but catalog records for those full-text e-journals would give their product more visibility to those readers who use our library. A single record for the whole aggregation is just one place on a virtual shelf; adding another record for each title within the aggregation gives the publisher's product more spaces on our virtual shelf.
C. Yes, but it all depends on the price and how the records fit in to our database. USMARC is a minimum expectation. And we don't want to write a new loader for every aggregation.

5. Further comments or suggestions

The answers given above don't really address the issues of cataloging the titles in aggregators' sets of full-text e-journals. We have not found any method satisfactory for certain aggregations.

With Project Muse and JSTOR on one end of a continuum and Lexis/Nexis on the other, we see vast differences among the various aggregators. And so we have tailored our responds to each aggregation. In general we view the salient points as being

the stability of the content (including coverage) within the aggregation and
the integrity of the journal as an distinct, retrievable entity within the aggregator

In brief, aggregator products like Project Muse and JSTOR are collections of online journals; aggregator products like Lexis/Nexis are article databases. Article databases break articles out of the container journals and re-sort them or make them accessible by an aggregator's search tool. In article databases, the relation between a journal and the articles within the journal is relegated to a source label.

We catalog the titles individually for Project Muse and JSTOR. The records we have for them as aggregators are authority records or order/payment records that are not displayed to the public. These authority records do not contain URLs. We could catalog Project Muse and JSTOR as publications to provide access at that level, but we haven't done so. Both Project Muse and JSTOR are listed in our most general lists of e-journals.

See http://www.library.yale.edu/pubstation/alphalist.html

We do not catalog the titles within Lexis/Nexis (what you will) since the content is unstable both in titles and coverage within those titles (additionally, LN has only recently begun to make it possible to get usable information about titles and coverage.) LN is seen by us as an article database. As such, we catalog the database and not the source files for the articles within the database.

Aggregator products like UMI's proquest direct and WilsonWeb's titles are between these extremes. Having grown from indexes to journals and journal articles into full text databases of journal articles, they seem to be neither fish nor fowl. Currently, we have not determined a set and certain course of action. We have cataloged the aggregations and we have when possible linked to HTML lists of the titles contained therein. While we see this as better than having no access for readers to lists of the titles in these aggregators, we are not confident this approach is worthy of permanence.

In closing, the immediate critical issue is the stability of the journal titles within an aggregation and the ability or interest of the aggregator in making the content of the aggregation know to the librarys and ultimately the readers. Without a modicum of stability and usable information from the aggregator about the content of the aggregation, we may not be able to catalog them any more than we were able to catalog the mega CD-ROMs.

A less immediate issue is the future of the journal as the premier article delivery mechanism of scholarly communication. We don't know how this will turn out. But we must expect the print journal and its role in scholarly communication to be radically changed as it migrates to a new publication medium and new distribution system. When journal articles and the indexes to them have been completely integrated, What role is there for the library catalog?

last updated: May 2000

Send comments to ann.okerson@yale.edu