RE: Cataloguing open access

[J�rgensen Lotte <Lotte.Jorgensen@LUB.LU.SE>]

In reply to David Goodman I would like to clarify some points regarding
our system ELIN@ at Lund University Our aim is an integrated
journal/article system, because we definitely agree that this is
necessary.  The description I gave of ELIN@ was rather short and may have
given the wrong impression. It is much more than a journal list. It is
integrated with our local OPAC with links from one to the other. We are
planning to add all our paper titles into ELIN@ with holdings and links to
the OPAC record. We are also adding metadata of non-subscribed titles with
order options and we are working on integration with the subject based
bibliographic databases.

Our users are creative and impatient and if we don't serve them for sure
they will find other ways. With all the interlinking options available
online it can be argued that one single catalog is if not pointless then
at least not necessary. You can have different collections in different
databases and as long as you can cross search them I don't think the users
care what input format we are using. :-)
 
Regards
Lotte

Lotte Jorgensen
Lund University Libraries, Head Office
P.O.Box 134, SE-221 00 LUND, Sweden 
Visiting address Tornav�gen 9B, Lund
Tel: 046-222 34 31
Fax: 046-222 36 82
E-mail: lotte.jorgensen@lub.lu.se

-----Original Message-----
From: David Goodman [mailto:dgoodman@phoenix.Princeton.EDU]
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2003 1:42 AM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: Cataloguing open access

Approaches such as yours can reduce the workload and produce excellent
ejournal lists, but the problem I have with this general strategy is that
it causes patrons to ignore the non-electronic resources. I have often
encountered users who thought that the ejournal list was the total journal
holdings of the library. Admittedly in some fields essentially all the
current and back journals will be available online. However, this is not
yet true of most subjects even for journals, and it will be a long time
until it is even roughly true for other material. Thus I think we need an
integrated solution. The difficulty here is that the catalog has
traditionally not been a very effective mechanism for ordinary users in
identifying journals. It works well for serial catalogers, which is as
expected as they designed it for their own use. I think other librarians
can be expected to learn how to use it adequately, as we use other tools
designed by specialists without apparent concern for those outside. For
ordinary users, coping with title changes in any available system is not
practical--hence the widespread use of locally prepared lists in all
science libraries and other areas where journals are the main resource.
The practical temporary solution here is the various systems of reference
linking, such as SerialSolutions, LinkFinder, and SFX. These can even add
sufficient information to a catalog display to make it understandable. In
my opinion I think we would do best to use these as steps towards the
admittedly difficult goal of producing a usable single catalog for all the
library resources.

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