Re: IUG meeting proposed discussion - records with URLs

["Alfred Kraemer" <akraemer@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I have a feeling many of those who responded to Linda's message so far
maintain growing lists of e-journals within Innopac, outside of Innopac,
and -in most instances- both places, or even more.

I'm hopeful that those who attend the discussion at the IUG will summarize
for the list.

A few weeks back we looked at several options to better facilitate access to
electronic journals. Like many other III libraries -and not only III
libraries for that matter- we wound up using a separate spreadsheet/database
for that purpose.
We did not think that we could provide key information on electronic
journals in a clear, easy to interpret fashion through the online catalog
(or through the online catalog only) especially: information about access
restrictions, range of full-text for electronic journal.

Another problem was the lack of good option to display a complete, separate
list of e-journals from Innopac. I'm aware that some III libraries have
creatively used III options (e.g. series index) to be able to retrieve a
listing of ejournals. Gettysburg College has devised an interesting
approach.

Well, I'll stop short here before going into a list of things why we do not
use our Innopac as the basis for our e-journal 'administration'. In all
fairness, however, I don't know of any library system that has managed to
provide the needed administrative and display features for e-journals.

By the way, after exploring several options, we opted to add the following
ejournals list: http://www.lib.mcw.edu/html/independent/ejs.html .

Although it contains more information than our old list and is created by a
Perl script from a spreadsheet, I also would like to believe that this is a
temporary makeshift solution and that library system vendors would provide a
way to produce something similar.

 Alfred Kraemer
Head, Technical Services
Medical College of Wisconsin Libraries
8701 Watertown Plank Road
Milwaukee, WI 53226

Phone: 414-456-4273
E-Mail: akraemer@xxxxxxxxxx
































----- Original Message -----
From: Xudong Jin <xdjin@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <INNOPAC@xxxxxxxxxx>; <innopac@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2000 11:22 AM
Subject: Re: IUG meeting proposed discussion


> At Ohio Wesleyan we are facing a similar situation. I would also be
> interested in participating in a discussion on this.
>
> Xudong Jin
> Head of Technical Services
> Ohio Wesleyan University
> Delaware, OH 43015
> 740-368-3258
> 740-368-3222 (fax)
> xdjin@xxxxxxxxxx
>
> At 02:16 AM 4/6/00 -0500, Linda Bills wrote:
> >I would be interested in meeting (perhaps as a Birds of a Feather)
> >with a small group of people to talk about how the catalogs we have
> >on III can be used as databases of URLS to be used in our webpages.
> >I would like to see if we can come up with definitive needs that
> >could be discussed with III as a suggestion for product development
> >that would have a market -- something that there is enough agreement
> >on that they would find it attractive to develope.  (I have already
> >presented my ideas on this subject to III, and I am interested to see
> >if there are other, better ways to do this, or other ways we can
> >leverage our existing III database.  Here is the basic theme I am
> >working with (stop here if you don't like essays).
> >
> >We catalog all of our paid web resources and many free resources on
> >our III database.  We also have links to these resources, in many
> >cases, from various more narrative webpages -- and given that we are
> >a consortium, there may be 3 or more links to the same resource.
> >Naturally it has occured to us how efficient it would be if we could
> >maintain the URL only in the III database and somehow pluck it from
> >III into our webpages as needed.
> >
> >Right now we accomplish this by having our webpage URLs go to our III
> >bib record, from which the user clicks the 856-produced link.  It's
> >good for upkeep but a bit confusing for the user.  We would also like
> >to be able to construct more tailored dynamic webpages (a la Cold
> >Fusion type stuff) using our III database of websites instead of
> >having to transfer info from there to another database for a
> >web-based application.  The basic model here is what CORC is doing
> >with their database + Pathfinders, but on a local level.  We have the
> >database, we maintain it on the III system for its value as part of
> >our catalog; we would like to leverage that if we can.
> >
> >We see several possibilities here -- that III could develop
> >something, or that we could use other products like Cold Fusion, or
> >CORC.  That we could transfer records around.... We do not have any
> >programming resources in our Consortium that could be easily
> >commandeered to do intensive local development.
> >
> >So, I would like to do a reality check with others who are working in
> >this area to see what's out there and how people are working with it.
> >
> >Please let me know if you are interested.
> >
> >Thanks,
> >
> >Linda
> >Linda G. Bills           Tri-College Library Automation Coordinator
> >lbills@xxxxxxxxxx      Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Swarthmore Colleges
> >(610) 526-5294           Canaday Library, Bryn Mawr College
> >(610) 526-7480 fax       101 N. Merion Ave.
> >                          Bryn Mawr, PA  19010
> >
> >
>