SCP Program Updates: 2010
SCP Monthly Update June 2010
Last month’s cataloging output covered several additions to existing packages: SpringerLink (182), EBSCO (58), China online journals (33), open access resources (27), Mary Ann Liebert (22), American periodical series (14), Sage (13), Apabi (11). Our single largest distribution was for the first set of records of World Bank monographs (2012).
We’ve still not heard back from OCLC on the status of our local holdings file. Until we hear back from OCLC, SCP will continue to track holdings changes locally so that we can immediately send an updated file to OCLC. For titles to which all, or some of the campuses have lost complete access, SCP is manually removing the campuses’ XXXER holdings symbols so that they do not display as being held by them.
Until next month …
SCP Monthly Update May 2010
SCP staff sent our file of some 300,000 serial Local Holdings Records (created using SCP data processed through the new CDL script) to OCLC on May 11. We are currently awaiting OCLC’s analysis of the file. If OCLC reports no problems, SCP staff will institute a weekly output of updated and new serial holdings data that will go to CDL for processing and then on to OCLC for loading. Although Local Holdings Records can be viewed in the FirstSearch version of WorldCat, remember that they have not yet been implemented in WorldCat Local, and will not be found in Next Generation Melvyl.
For a variety of reasons, as of July 1, 2010, the work of CDL Acquisitions will be coordinated by Adolfo Tarango. By grouping CDL Acquisitions and SCP under one manager in a new Systemwide Collection Services unit, we hope to capitalize on the strength of each group to develop new synergies and efficiencies. We are working on addressing various local and system organizational details that such a change entails; however, the core functions performed by staff in each unit will not change.
This past month’s new cataloging output covered a variety of small additions to a variety of packages such as American Periodicals Series (97 titles), China academic journals Series F (44 titles), Apabi digital library yearbooks (40 titles), EBSCO journals (22 titles), Safari (19 titles), Cambridge (14 titles), SpringerLink (11 titles), Oxford (8 titles), and Udndata newspapers (6 titles). But our biggest output for the month was for Springer E-Books for which 999 titles were cataloged. This puts our Springer titles cataloged count to date at 24,551 titles.
Until next month …
SCP Monthly Update April 2010
SCP staff is currently reviewing a test file of serial records that the new CDL script has processed for LHR record generation. This file consists of all the SCP serials, over 30,000 titles, so we are spot checking some 300,000 LHRs. So far, the processing seems to have proceeded successfully, by next month I hope to report that the file of serials has gone to OCLC.
We received notice that patrons are not able to print PDF files for titles in the MIT CogSci collection. MIT Press confirmed that they do not permit printing of PDFs as they have not negotiated printing rights for the CogSci collection. We are surprised that after so many years, no one has complained about this lack of functionality; regardless, the SCP Advisory Committee agreed on a statement to add to the 856 $z to alert patrons of this fact ($z MIT via CogNet. Restricted to UC campuses [Printing not available]). We will redistribute all the MIT CogSci records with this new statement.
We discovered a “font” problem with one of our hooks. For the 793 America’s historical newspapers, it turns out the apostrophe is not being interpreted as such by our III system. We are “replacing” the incorrect character with the “correct” apostrophe and will redistribute the records (~1000) since we assume all the III campuses at least, experience the same problem.
Taylor & Francis transitioned 198 journals into Informa Healthcare, now licensed separately. We retagged the corresponding records with a new title hook and redistributed the records this past month. On the monographic side, distributions of note include records for 73 AccessEngineering, 220 Knovel, 201 SPIE, and 2058 Springer titles. Our quarterly posting of cataloging statistics through March 2010 can be accessed at: https://cdlib.org/2010q1/.
The redesigned SCP web page http://www.cdlib.org/services/collections/scp/ has been up for about three months now, so what do you think? Are you finding the information you need? SCP staff recently discussed the “What’s new” section of the page and have ideas for surfacing items that may be of wider interest. Note that you can subscribe to an RSS feed which will be fed from postings SCP staff make to the Shared Cataloging Program section of the CDL blog. We hope this helps address the ever present need for information about our activities.
Until next month …
SCP Monthly Update March 2010
Tuesday, Feb. 16, AM – Hanley Cocks, UCSD cataloger filling in for vacationing SCP cataloger Renee Chin, begins running routine PID validation reports. Later in the morning, Hanley starts noticing a pattern of broken links. By early afternoon, she has identified them as being CRC Press monograph titles and begins investigating some possible reasons that they are not working. Just after 3 pm, the call comes in from CDL—it’s Holly Eggleston following up on user reports regarding broken links with CRC Press. Exchanging notes, they confirm that CRC Press has launched us into a nightmare by changing their URLs with inadequate notice and insufficient testing of redirects. This is way past ugly.
So began a week of hard labor for SCP staff and two UCSD serial catalogers I drafted to help update the CRC Press PIDs. While we spent much time manually updating data in the PID server, some wonderful work by Kate Garvey-Clasby and even more by Hanley allowed batch updating of about half the 5,000 PIDs that needed fixing. And of course, being PIDs, the updates were immediately functional for the campuses. At this point, all the CRC Press links should be functioning correctly; however, we did discover a number of problems such as CRC Press metadata not corresponding to the actual content it was associated with. For example, in a more “benign” case, the cataloged edition matched the content accessed, but the CRC Press metadata labeled it a different edition. The nature of these problems has been reported to CDL and CRC Press and hopefully will be corrected over time, but please report to us any problems you discover.
In last month’s update I reported on how SCP would be generating serial local holding records for the ten campuses and that CDL would be writing a program to help us do this. CDL has completed the programming and we sent a file of 25 titles for them to test their program. It worked just fine on that set of 25 titles. We have now sent them a larger file of records, 1000 titles, and are awaiting the results. If their program works on this set, we should be able to send our entire set of serial records to OCLC fairly soon for local holdings record creation. Yea!
Along with the CRC Press clean-up, we steadily produced cataloging for various existing packages. On the new side, some 140 AccessEngineering titles went out with records for the remaining available titles going out this month. Bie-Hwa sent out the first of the records for the Chinese language resource Apabi, about 35 titles. These records represent yearbooks, some of which are serials, some are monographs, so you will find them in both of your SCP files. Per bibliographer’s request, we analyzed titles for the journal Hesperia supplements, 32 in number, available from JSTOR. The Hesperia supplements cover Greek archeology, art, language, and history.
Until next month …
SCP Monthly Update February 2010
Record distributions worth noting this past month are as follows: 224 EBSCO Academic Search Complete journals, 265 African Writer Series monographs, 382 IEEE conference proceedings, 148 SourceOECD monographs, and 107 SuperStar monographs. On the negative side, we lost access to the eleven International Union of Crystallography journals on January 1st. We were recently asked about the CalDoc records that UC Santa Cruz updated the URLs on, were they redistributed? Yes, they have been redistributed, and as a reminder, if you do any OCLC record maintenance on a CalDoc title SCP has previously distributed (check the holdings for the XXXER symbols), please send an email notice with the OCLC number to Donal O’Sullivan <dosullivan@ucsd.edu> so that we may redistribute to all the campuses.
We have submitted specifications to CDL for creation of SCP serial local holding records (LHRs). A very simplified summary of what the programming will do is: a generic III check-in record will be used as a source to generate LHRs with default fixed data elements. This allows SCP to maintain data once (in one check-in record) instead of in multiple, redundant check-in records for each campus. Then, using the 920 data from the SCP bibliographic records, the program/script will create multiple LHRs, each coded for a specific campus and populated with 856s. Assuming it can be done, the restriction note text in the 856 $z will be used to determine whether or not a specific 856 is added to a campus’ LHR. The end result will be a separate LHR for each campus containing only 856s relevant to them. Once the programming is set, we hope to establish a weekly workflow for creating/updating LHRs.
In case you’re wondering, reclamation clean-up continues. Kate Garvey-Clasby is working through various groups of titles identified for review with records sent out as necessary as completed.
Until next month …
SCP Monthly Update January 2010
Greetings all, we trust your new year started off well. Given the winter closure, not much happened in December; but a couple of noteworthy items we did get out are some titles from the African Writer Series along with the first batch of Chinese language SuperStar monographs from Chinamaxx. We have posted updated cataloging package statistics that cover our cataloging work by packages through December 2009, please see https://cdlib.org/2009q4/ Also posted is our annual report, https://cdlib.org/scp_report_010810/, happy reading.
Negotiations concluded for the Springer 2010 titles and we’ve started work on those as over 900 titles accumulated over the last three months. The Springer Architecture and Design Collection no longer exists, those titles migrated into the Engineering Collection. We will update the 793 hooks for those records accordingly.
CDL recently licensed the JSTOR Arts and Sciences VIII collection. Given that JSTOR has always been a very high profile package, we will work on these as quickly as possible. While the current title list names about 30 titles, with the typical number of title changes we tend to find, we expect to actually catalog about double that number from this initial offering. Eventually about 130 titles will be available and later additions will be cataloged as they get added to the collection.
We now have a broad outline of how LHRs may be done for SCP records. It looks as if we may have no choice but to create separate LHRs for each campus, which means creating up to ten LHRs for each title. Fortunately, multiple 856s can be placed in an LHR, so it appears that we won’t need to create separate LHRs for each 856 for each campus. Also, if the programming can be done, we may be able to customize the LHRs for each campus so that only the 856s links appropriate to them are in their LHR. This should eliminate a historic problem, at least in NGM displays, of Tier 2 links appearing in records for non-subscribing campuses because the title also appears in a separate Tier 1package.
CDL launched its Web space redesign January 21st, which means all the SCP pages have new URLs. The URL for SCP’s main page is now http://www.cdlib.org/services/collections/scp/. Please update your bookmarks accordingly.
Until next month …
Adolfo Tarango