When the sheer volume of incoming electronic serials threatened to overwhelm us in the University Libraries at Virginia Tech, we embraced the opportunity to examine our entire e-serials management system and options for utilizing services provided by vendors. This resulted in the formation of a collaborative task force composed of people from serials management and cataloging. The task force evaluated the services provided by suppliers of ready-made bibliographic records, and studied processes for implementing a MARC record service (MRS). We uncovered some interesting problems during the implementation of the serials MRS that required some innovative solutions. We addressed the impact on our discovery platform, and the quality of serial bibliographic records, which resulted in a change of our philosophy of e-resource management. In this presentation we will describe the ways in which the MRS changed the way we manage serials cataloging and holdings records for electronic journals, and the way in which some simple scripting in Python helped us overcome some significant obstacles. Presenters: Andrea Ogier, Althea Aschmann, and Michael Sechler, Virginia Tech University

1. June 12, 2012
Teaching Wild Horses to Sing:
Harmonizing the Deluge of Electronic Serials
Andrea Ogier, Althea Aschmann, and Michael Sechler

2. Defining the problem

3. History
• Began acquiring e-journals in 1990’s
• Online databases around much longer
• Began cataloging them in earnest in
1998
• Mostly duplicates of titles we already
had in print
• When decided to go with the “one-
record approach,” that is making a
composite record for all the
manifestations of a resource.
• Then came the “online only” resources
and NetLibrary . . .

4. The problem
• Volume of E-resources
growing exponentially
• Available cataloging
resources insufficient to
handle the volume
• Traditional cataloging alone
cannot keep pace
• Need to synchronize
immediate availability with
access.

5. If we can’t do it ourselves
• Manifestation of clear need
to employ outside
resources and services
to assist us.
• Batch loading experiments
beginning with NetLibrary
• The crushing need for a
workable solution just
wouldn’t leave . . .

6. Multiple Entrances to
Eresources: Multiple Systems
• A-Z Lists
• E-journals database
• Online catalog
• Summon (Discovery platform)
• Institutional Repository
(VTworks)

7. Automate more, but how?
• March 2010: charged with
investigating automation
solutions and use of vendor
supplied services
• Sept. 2010: preliminary report
• Sept. 2010-March 2011:
research period
• Jan. 2011: Final report and
recommendations submitted.
Further research

8. First Step:
• Talked to ten other academic
libraries about their use of vendor
services.
• Discovered some were not much
farther along than we were
• Found three libraries who were
using MARC Record Services for
e-journals for a year or longer and
interviewed them in detail about
their processes.

9. Three Major Players
• Serials Solutions 360 MARC update
service™
• Ex Libris MARC it!™ used in
conjunction with its SFX™ products
• Ebsco MARC ™
• Some other smaller companies
• We decided to go with Serials
Solutions 360 MARC update service™
because we were already using other
serials solutions products and this
alternative would not present
compatibility issue

10. Implementation Phase
• Implementation began
September 2011.
• Our consensus is that “one
record approach” is no longer
workable with vendor
supplied records
• Splitting composite records
apart into separate online and
hardcopy records part of
implementation process.

11. Balancing Quality &
Ease of Maintenance

12. Balancing Act
• Need to balance ease of
ongoing maintenance with
highest level of quality
possible

13. 3 Working Groups
• Crucial Metadata Standards
• Primarily catalogers
• Determine essential metadata elements
• Workflow
• Primarily serials personnel
(with cataloger liaison)
• Determine workflow processes/procedures
• Priorities
• Serials & Cataloging & Collection
Management personnel
• Determine order of collections
for workflow

14. Phase 1: “Low Hanging Fruit”
• 6,000 short bib records in catalog

15. Phase 2: Splitting Records
• 11,000 multi-format bib records
already in catalog
• Purpose: provide 1 bib record for
each title, regardless of format
• Problem: Serials Solutions control #
needed in 001 field of online serial
• Decision: make a duplicate of
bib record & separate holdings
by format (online / non-online)

16. Splitting Records
Rationale:
• Since bib record was good enough
as it was,
it should still be good enough,
in duplicate.
• Authority control already done
• Classification numbers already
assigned
• Class # used by Collection
Management

17. Splitting Records
Complications
• Format specific notes (533 field)
• General notes with format specific
references (5XX fields)
• Also available online / Available also online /
Available online from …
• Format specific access points
• 830 field
• American periodical series [1 of 3 time periods]
• American periodicals series online, 1740-1900

18. Phase 3: Everything Else
• Add Serials Solutions control #s to bib
records for remaining online serials
• Labor-intensive process performed by
Serials unit
• Full-time staff members & part-time students
• Scripting solutions saved much manual work
• Collection-by-collection process
• Coordinated with Collection Management
personnel via Priorities Working Group

19. Quality Control
• Crucial Metadata Standards Working Group
• “Triaging” of problems by serials cataloger
along spectrum
Minor Major
problems problems
can be need to be
tolerated addressed

20. Quality Control Example 1
• Title typo

21. Quality Control Example 2
• Missing 780 field for earlier title

22. Quality Control Example 3
• Became online only

23. Cooperative Cataloging
• Serials Solutions issues
• Problems in Serials Solutions
Original records
• CONSER records that have
been missed
• CONSER issues
• Fix locally
• Make note of record # & problem
• VT has applied for CONSER
membership

24. COLLABORATION
&
COMMUNICATION
Serials & Cataloging Teams
Virginia Tech & Serials
Solutions

25. Creative Resolutions
http://vi.sualize.us/view/3f8d6b270c5bc1bfc9ef3cf9ef1826

26. Our Goals: She canna Strike a
take much balance
more of this between
Capt’n!
quality of
records
and
simplicity of
management
http://joeauburn.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/we-need-more-bandwidth-captain/

27. The Problem:
Identifying the vendor
supplied records for titles
that were already in our
system.
The Solution:
Find the unique ID from the vendor
supplied records and place it in the
matching bibliographic record in our
catalog.

28. Law of the Hammer
“If all you have is a
hammer, then every
problem looks like a nail.”
~ paraphrased from Abraham Maslow’s
Psychology of Science (1966)

29. Python
www.python.org
http://xkcd.com
/353/

30. à la Jon Udell @
http://blog.jonudell.net/2012/01/09/another-way-to-think-about-
geeks-and-repetitive-tasks/

31. managing your MARC
records
“How to make your sewing
easier, quicker and more
professional-looking”
MarcEdit

32. Simple Scripting Solutions
• create a subset of MARC records from a
group of individual MARC files.
• create a spreadsheet of certain fields from
file of MARC records.

33. Less Simple Scripting Solutions
• automate the process of matching records
between systems ISSN-L
Catalog Vendor
Bibliographic THE SCRIPT Bibliographic
Records
Records
2. Compare ISSNs to ISSN-
L table
3. Match on a combination
of ISSN-L, Title, and Dates
(008)
4. Take 001 field from
Vendor Records and copy
into Catalog Record

34. Cleanup

35. Scripting
(manu)
Solutions
Book of
Kells…
it’s a
manuScript!
(ha ha!)

36. Learn to Code!
FREE Online Resources:
• Udacity
CS101: Building a Search
Engine in Python
http://www.udacity.com/
• CodeYear
http://codeyear.com/
36 If Keanu can do it…so can you!

37. http://wn.com/Doppler_effect
Effect on
other
Systems
(Any fans of the Doppler Effect in the house?)

38. “The HIIIILS are
Questions? ALIIIIIVE with
the sound of No, I will NOT
MUUUUSIC!” wear a dress
made out of the
curtains.
Althea Aschmann:
aschmann@vt.edu
Michael Sechler:
msechler@vt.edu
Andi Ogier:
alop@vt.edu
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20101109_11_0_PAWHUS60157