Searching for UC Systemwide Electronic Resources in the Catalogs

By Ellen Meltzer, Manager, CDL Information Services; Linda Barnhart, Head of Metadata Services (UCSD); and Adolfo Tarango, Head of CJK, Serials & Shared Cataloging Division (CDL/UCSD)

There is a disparity between what users see in current Melvyl, the Next Generation Melvyl Pilot, and the campus OPACs for a number of SCP records (mostly monographs).  This problem arose because of the large number of records being loaded both from the SCP reclamation project and the reload of UC Berkeley’s Millennium records into current Melvyl during summer 2009.   (This does not affect SCP titles currently being loaded.)

The most reliable places to look to see if an SCP title is available online to your campus are the NGM Pilot and your local campus OPAC.

Record clean-up could take place at a later date if a decision is made to do so.

What are SCP records?

The Shared Cataloging Program (SCP) provides bibliographic records for UC systemwide electronic resources for the ten campuses, which avoids redundant work across the campuses.  SCP distributes  database, ejournal, and ebook records weekly to each campus to be loaded into their local online public access catalog (OPAC), and historically, from there into current Melvyl.

Why are SCP records out-of-synch in current Melvyl, the NGM Pilot and the local OPACs?

When the Next Generation Melvyl (NGM) Pilot was added to the suite of UC discovery tools, it became critical to have the holdings for each UC library accurately reflected in that database.  This synchronization process is called reclamation.  In July 2009, SCP sent a snapshot of the approximately 350,000 SCP records to have it matched with the NGM Pilot (WorldCat Local) database.  OCLC processed these records and the UC campuses now have their SCP holdings accurately reflected in NGM, which facilitates user discovery and resource sharing.  This synchronization also favorably impacts WorldCat.org and FirstSearch WorldCat.

For every individual title, the link between the NGM Pilot system and local OPACs is the OCLC record number.  After adding the OCLC number, SCP staff then redistributed the entire file of records to each campus to ensure the local OPAC copies of these records would also match.  Campuses then each processed the SCP reclamation file, updating and/or adding new records to their local OPAC.

Because the only change in the data was the OCLC record number–not any other significant access or holdings data–the question arose about how useful it would be to send these records to current Melvyl.  350,000 records would have to have been sent from each of the ten campuses, a total of 3.5 million records for CDL staff to handle at the same time as Berkeley’s Integrated Library System (ILS) transition, loading another several million records.  This would have put undue strain on the system.  Over time, the SCP records in current Melvyl will gradually become out-of-date.

If a decision is made to do so in the future, SCP records could be re-synchronized with current Melvyl.

How many records were affected?

Several thousand records representing systemwide electronic resources may be affected.  For example, records may appear in current Melvyl for which UC no longer has systemwide subscriptions, or for which coverage or the campuses licensing a resource may have changed.

SCP continues to do new cataloging and as an ongoing practice synchronizes its work with the NGM Pilot.  It continues to distribute files of new and updated records weekly to the ten campuses.

What are the best discovery tools to use to search for electronic resources?

The NGM Pilot is the place to go for the earliest notice of newly-cataloged electronic resources and for the retrospective file of all SCP-cataloged materials. Current Melvyl is increasingly incomplete for systemwide electronic resources.

Local OPACs are usually a week or two behind NGM.  Campuses receive the files of records for newly-cataloged electronic resources approximately one week after the information is reflected in NGM.  Campus loading schedules of these files into the local OPAC may vary across UC, and might take longer than a week.  For specific campus details, check with your SCP Advisory Committee representative.

Always have your users search the NGM Pilot for the most complete and up-to-date information on systemwide electronic resources, followed by the local OPAC.