I'm a big fan of link servers (my experience is all with the SFX product
to date). Recent postings in the FRBRization threads has made me
consider how they work as loosely coupled system for libraries, and I
think point towards a (slightly more) FRBRized view of the world. In
fact I would guess that actually most (all?) link resolvers are built
with (to some extent) a FRBRized view of e-journals because it was the
logical way to build them.
I feel that potentially link resolvers could be leveraged much more than
currently and some of the things I'd like to see from an NGC ponit of
view might be possible with tools that are already available to us. In
the best "oh well, it's Friday" tradition, the following (slightly long
and possibly rambling) post is an exploration of this idea - for those
who can be bothered I'd be interested to know:
Do others share my view of the potential here?
Any critical reaction (constructive if you can!)?
Is anyone aware of work in this area?
Just to think about journals to start with, as this already works to
some extent.
If we have an OpenURL with each journal record in the catalogue, then we
are essentially putting a 'click here for electronic holdings' link next
to each title. At this point it ceases to be relevant whether the user
is looking at the print or e- record for the journal in the catalogue -
in terms of presenting the electronic holdings, the OpenURL link does
the same in both cases. This starts to suggest that having one or two
bib records to represent the journals electronic holdings is irrelevant.
If we go one step further and have an OpenURL that picks up the users
Resolver address rather than just the local institutions address, then
we present the electronic holdings that the user in question has access
to - personalised holdings statements - brilliant.
However, we can also see the limitations. In most cases the resolvers
only deal with electronic holdings. I can't see any real reason for this
except that this is the space they were designed to work in (What I
wouldn't give for some nice, machine-parsable, holdings statements for
our print journals). Some libraries have taken the step of putting their
print holdings into their resolvers, and some have worked out ways of
getting their resolvers to display print holding information from their
catalogues - either seems quite a big step forward to me.
If we think about books, then link resolvers have much more limited use
to date. SFX certainly deals with some of the e-book packages, but not
all, and I've not seen any real implementations of this - probably
because the use of OpenURLs in A&I databases is so much more immediately
powerful when dealing with journal citations. I think this is bound to
change. It would be interesting to experiment with putting book
manifestation/edition/holding(item) information into a link resolver and
see how it worked - has anyone got any experience with this type of
thing?
Finally, another limitation is that link resolvers tend not to talk to
each other. If I'm from Institution A and I'm searching the catalogue of
Institution B and find an item I want, then what might I want to know?
Whether A has it electronically (i.e. I can access it now), whether A
has it physically (i.e. I can go to my own library), whether B has it
physically (i.e. I can go and get it) and possibly if B has it
electronically (if I have access to Bs electronic collections, or if it
is available to me if I go to B and use it in the library). (there are
almost certainly other combinations/possibilities, but you can fill
these in). To answer these questions would require As link resolver and
Bs link resolver to communicate all their electronic and physical
holdings into a central place (probably actually As resolver I guess),
and present me with a unified list of access details. I think some
consortia (e.g. CDL) have done something like this when running multiple
link resolvers across consortium, but I've not seen any examples where
the resolvers can spontaneously communicate on demand.
So - some questions.
Should we all start moving our print journal holdings into link
resolvers? If not, why not?
Should we be putting e-book or print book information into link
resolvers? Ditto?
Where should we start in terms of making it easy for link resolvers to
share information with each other?
Does anyone else think that the idea of an OPAC with holdings
information driven purely by link resolvers has potential? (I suppose
more generally - can we build on the idea of link resolvers to form a
loosely coupled holdings information system?)
Best
Owen
Owen Stephens
Assistant Director: e-Strategy and Information Resources
Imperial College London Library
Imperial College London
South Kensington
London SW7 2AZ
Tel: 020 7594 8829
Email: o.stephens_at_imperial.ac.uk
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Dykas, Felicity A.
Sent: 06 September 2007 18:06
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Cutter's Rules in full text - a case for
FRBRization
Aggregator neutral records are being used for serials and I think we
should implement them for monographs. If this is done there will be one
record in WorldCat for all digitized copies of a particular book.
Separate records in WorldCat for the NetLibrary version, ebrary version,
Google-scanned version, etc., is a problem. I cringe when I add another
record because the provider is different.
We've cataloged a few books that were scanned by Google and are creating
one record for a title, even if more than one copy has been scanned. In
the URL field we are indicating who held the original book:
http://laurel.lso.missouri.edu/search/Y?searchtype=o&searcharg=166255505
&SORT=D&searchscope=8. Cataloging rules for online materials continue
to be in flux (or at least not clear) and we may be taking some
liberties in what we're doing.
I think separate records for print and online will facilitate searching
and identification (eventually).
Felicity Dykas
MU Libraries
University of Missouri--Columbia
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Frances Dean McNamara
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2007 9:42 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Cutter's Rules in full text - a case for
FRBRization
At ALA OCLC was describing how they will start adding records to
Worldcat for Google and Google member library e-books from the Google
Book Search project. However they plan to add new separate bibs for
every instance, using "institutional records" where there are separate
instances of the same book for Michigan, Harvard, NYPL, etc. They will
automatically retain the OCLC# for the print copy. In fact they are
creating these new records from that print copy.
The proliferation of separate bibs in Worldcat for all these copies of
the same thing is probably going to be messy. I don't think that is
being done to help people searching for the title, it's to help
librarians know what's been digitized and who has the file, I think.
What we really want is an easy way to know that something is available
in print and electronic form and to easily be able to decide which form
is the right one for what we are doing at that moment, don't you think?
Isn't this like link resolver linking? Wouldn't it be better to keep
that information somewhere and use a link resolver to go find out which
electronic versions are available to me? Especially since we are
already finding that what is available to someone in one country may not
be available in another.
I'm not understanding why people think separate bib records are useful
for this. I can't help thinking that adding these things to
knowledgebases for link resolvers may provide a better end result for
users.
Frances McNamara
University of Chicago
Received on Fri Sep 07 2007 - 08:06:47 EDT