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March 3, 1998
2) Sam sent a letter to Sarah about the authentication issues we discussed at our last meeting.
3) Lydia is dealing with the CDs for the Energy Database. LTD hasn't yet started investigating how to provide access to WebSPIRS.
4) Quorum. When key players are missing we should try to conduct side conversations to get their input or hold off on final decisions.
5) This is Sam's last meeting. David will take over as chair. Bill Kara will replace Sam on the committee. Diane Hillmann is joining the group. Jerry Caswell is replacing Tom Hickerson.
6) Agenda for upcoming meetings:
a) NOTIS
BPO/GPO titles (roughly the
same as the ProQuest titles) are already cataloged in NOTIS without 520
fields. Mann has been planning to update these records to show title
changes and to add new titles.
Bill estimates that updating the records (with still no 520s or Gateway subject headings) would cost 260-290 hours of staff time (2/3 of which can be student time.) Karen thought these numbers were low, her estimate was around 400-450 hours. Adding 520s would add a lot of hours to the project.
The NOTIS database is permanent, we should make an effort for it to reflect our holdings accurately.
ERC's recommendation: update NOTIS records without adding 520s or Gateway subject headings. Mann is going to do most of the work and solicit help from ILR and CTS. Bibliographic fields needed include: 899, 506, 856.
b) Library Gateway
The Gateway has no title
level records currently for full text journals in ABI and Periodical
Abstracts. Adding a separate record for each title would more than double
the size of the database and would necessiate the revision of some subject
captions. Adding individual 520s and subject headings would take about 400
hours of staff time according to Bill Kara. Or we could use a generic 520
and save about 200 hours that way. Other options include searchable or
static titles lists or doing
nothing.
ERC's recommendation: provide a searchable title list for known-item retrieval via the Networked Resources search box. Search would retrieve a generic record for ABI and for Periodical Abstracts that state that the title searched for is one of several hundred through ProQuest and how to find a specific citation from the opening screen. This will address our biggest problem (i.e. known item searches failing) without too much of an investiment in this temporary catalog.
*We shouldn't use generic 520s because of shared cataloging. These are too local.
*We should push vendors to start providing their own cataloging for their titles. Other libraries must be struggling with this as well, we need to have our voices heard.
*We should not minimize the problems (previous attempts to catalog West and Mead products failed about 10 years ago because of the complexities)
*Company mergers can make tremendous changes overnight in what titles are avaiable through which service (maintenance problem.)
*We have to think about distributed maintenance of these records between CTS, ILR and Mann.
*Are our decisions driven by process or philosophy? Are we setting a precedent with this decision? We are going to repeat this discussion for Lexis/Nexis next meeting. Will we be able to recommend something different for that resource having made these recommendations today?
*Each aggregator might be in a category of its own. What's special about ProQuest is that the cataloging records are already in NOTIS.
*David and Karen will talk to Jerry and Tim (both absent today) about the feasability of the searchable title list.
*UMI has a script now to separate ABI and Periodical Abstracts. We should have separate records for the two databases.
*Gateway subject access to full text journal titles is desirable but not affordable in this case.
*Gateway static titles lists are not compatible with the philosophy of the system as a "common entryway."
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