Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 16:35:04 -0400
From: Peggy Sealor <psealor@SIL.SI.EDU>
Subject: Bib Records for Electronic Resources (Mitch Turitz) -Reply

Mitch, we have just finished cataloging each of the 177 electronic serial
titles which are the Academic Press'  IDEAL Project.  We have access to
the IDEAL Project though a consortium with a half dozen other libraries.
We have access to all of the titles whether they are in our scope or not.
We have a list of the titles on our homepage located at  http://sil.si.edu
This list is cited in one of the 856 tags in each record in our Catalog, and
provides access to the journals for the Smithsonian staff and community.

 We found that 38 of the electronic journal titles are held in the print
version in one or more of our branch libraries.  We added  information
about the electronic version to the bibliographic record for the print
version for the titles we held (single record method). A virtual branch
library was created for electronic resources which are available across
the library system.

It was decided to catalog all 177 electronic journal titles in our online
catalog. All of the IDEAL titles have good records on OCLC, so the "new"
titles were straightforward to process.  A Team was formed and trained
by the serials cataloger, who also catalogs computer files. Because of
good specific decisions made by the Database Planning and Standards
Committee I was able to create a procedures document which was well
received by the Team members.  We used constant data records and
some cut-and-paste configurations when possible (NOTIS doesn't have
many editing functions).

There were several title changes already. Frustrating, but to be
expected, I guess.  There will probably be other upkeep aspects.

Other concerns are about the brief display: the http addresses are in the
wrong place, availability is "Check Shelf" and so on.

You can access the Web version of the SIRIS catalog through our
homepage. Hyperlinks in each record are from the Digital resource part
of the long display. Each record has two 856 links, one for SI staff and
research community, and one to the IDEAL homepage for non-SI folks
(click on one to follow the path to your chosen title).

It is hard to track actual usage since we found we cannot do it by
electronic mathods.  At present, we rely on the reference staff
impressions and on direct communication from the patrons.  We are still
working on this aspect.

Peggy Sealor, Serials Cataloger
Original Cataloging Section, CSD
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
psealor@sil.si.edu