SCP Program Updates: 2011

2010

2011

SCP monthly update December 2011

This month’s update starts with a few system and file processing notes. First off, a reminder that the last SCP files for 2011 will be posted on Monday, December 19 and the first file of 2012 will be posted on January 9. Secondly, as approved by the SCP Advisory Committee, SCP added “$x UC open access” to the 856 field in all appropriate records. Campuses received the first set of these updated records with the December 5th files. A second batch was sent December 12th, with the final set of records to be distributed in the December 19th files. Approximately 5,500 serial, 10,500 monographic, and 25 integrating resources records will eventually be sent. All new cataloging will bear this data as a matter of course. The addition of this data is designed to aid the campuses in selecting out these SCP resources when creating their local holdings records for OCLC. Lastly, to address problems with the rendering of some diacritics, SCP will move to distributing the SCP files in Unicode instead of MARC8. Assuming the campuses report no problems with a test file to be distributed, the changeover is planned to commence with the files of February 6, 2012.

The most significant serial record distributions for the past month were from EBSCO (140 titles), Open access (176 titles), and 19th Century newspapers (69 titles). For monographs, there was a large posting of new content from the Materials Research Society (777 titles) with additional distribution for CRC Press (103 titles), Wiley (84 titles), IEEE (64 titles), and Apabi (50 titles).

The UCSD Libraries will be closed between December 24 and January 2, reopening on January 3. Also, SCP staffing will be reduced the week of December 19-23 as several staff will be taking additional time off. Remaining staff will address problems as time permits during that week and staff will address any issues or problems arising during the Libraries closing period as soon as possible when they return on January 3rd. SCP staff wishes you and yours a wondrous holiday experience and a most prosperous annum novum.

Until next month …

SCP monthly update November 2011

Output of e-book records was once again topped by records for Springer (1763 titles). Analytic records for the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (993 titles) represented another major distribution as well as records from Alexander Street Press (654 titles) almost all of which were for titles from the Classical Music Library. Other significant distributions came from IEEE (229 titles), CRC Press (95 titles), and Superstar (49 titles). Our most notable serial records distributions were for LexisNexis (69 titles), Open Access (57 titles), EBSCO (52 titles), Project Muse (28 titles), and Superstar (24 titles).

SCP’s 2010/2011 annual report is posted: http://www.cdlib.org/scp_annual_report_2010_2011. A few highlights to note, as of June 30, 2011, the total number of unique SCP resources catalog stood at 488,309. The net increase in serial titles was 3,582 from last year which brought our unique serials title count to 34,570. The net increase for monographs was over five times as much as serials, 19,682, bringing the total number of unique monograph titles cataloged to 453,107.

Looking forward, note that the last SCP files for 2011 will be posted on Monday, December 19 and the first file of 2012 will be posted on January 9.

Until next month …

SCP monthly update October 2011

There were only minor additions to our serials packages this past month; however, we continued to distribute significant numbers of records for e-books. They included records for Springer (346), SIAM (181), IEEE (140), CRC Press (81), and SuperStar (81). Current cataloging statistics for each SCP package are now posted (SCP Statistics : 3rd Quarter 2011). This data reflects cataloging completed through the end of September. The number given after each package named is the number of titles cataloged for that package.

Looking forward, SCP submitted to JSC for approval the following as fourth quarter cataloging priorities:

Project-oriented
1. IEEE Conference Proceedings (~2,600 titles)
2. EEBO (~125,000 titles)
3. DOAJ (~1,100 titles)
4. LexisNexis (~1,800 titles)
Standing
1. New content from currently licensed journal packages (transfers, adds, etc.)
2. End of year/new acquisitions
3. UC supported open access resources (e.g. eScholarship, BioMedCentral)
4. Other open access resources (by request only)
5. New content from other licensed packages

Our priorities are now separated into project-oriented and standing priorities. The project-oriented priorities are specific packages or projects SCP recommends for focused attention. The standing priorities take a macro view of the UC’s entire e-resource collection and are set by the JSC. SCP uses these standing priorities to manage its day-to-day workload on packages not called out as project-oriented priorities.

Our cataloging priorities for Chinese language resources are:

Apabi e-books (~4,700 titles)
Ongoing maintenance to cataloged packages (e.g. COJ, TEPS, SuperStar)
DragonSource International (~1,000 titles)

These priorities are recommended by SCP and are reviewed and approved by the East Asian Bibliographers.

Until next month …

SCP monthly update September 2011

Last month saw the distribution of a large number of e-book records. Leading the group was Early American Imprints (14,236) followed by Springer (2230), IEEE (313), SPIE (213), OECD (200), SIAM (180), Apabi (116), SuperStar (114), CRC Press (96), Knovel (76), Wiley (74), and Morgan & Claypool (55). The SIAM titles represent a new package and content will be added on an ongoing basis over the coming year. About half of the Morgan & Claypool titles represent the first additions to the subpackage Synthesis Collection 4 which CDL added this past year. We expect to send out a few hundred more Early American Imprints titles this month to finish up that package. The majority of the Springer titles distributed were German language materials. Many thanks to our graduating student assistant Pearl Choi whose command of German, and being a great assistant in general, made the cataloging of thousands of these titles over the past year possible. The remaining titles added represent new content to existing packages. On the serial side, distributions were on the low side with the major record additions limited to JSTOR (45) and China Academic Journals (30).

Until next month …

SCP monthly update August 2011

Until next month …

SCP monthly update July 2011

Notable e-book record distributions for May were Springer (1477), IEEE (521), Encyclopedia of Taiwan (212), and Wiley (60). Serial records distributed include titles from ScienceDirect (1562), EBSCO (103), Open access (96), JSTOR (30), and Cambridge (24). The Springer distribution included 865 Springer Protocols titles and the ScienceDirect distribution were all titles from the Freedom Collection. Cataloging for these two collections is now current. You will get about 100 more Encyclopedia of Taiwan this month and that will complete that package. All other May distributions represent newly-added content to packages.

There were a variety of systemwide end-of-year purchases which include e-books from SIAM, serial and database packages from Gale, and some Chinese language resources. We are in process of identifying our cataloging options for each and will be working with JSC on establishing the appropriate cataloging priorities. The JSC approved analytic cataloging for the serial Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences so you will see some 1900 records over the coming months representing the backfile, then records for the current volumes thereafter. You will shortly also start finding records for the Early American Imprint Series II (Shaw-Shoemaker) titles. We recently discovered records for them in OCLC and are working on harvesting them. We expect to distribute about 38,000 records for this package.

A parting request as we start the new fiscal year, if there is someone you believe should be receiving these monthly updates but is not, please ask them to let me know, atarango@ucsd.edu; I will be happy to add them to the distribution list. Thanks.

Until next month …

SCP monthly update June 2011

Notable e-book record distributions for May were Springer (337), Wiley (326), Apabi (181), Knovel (190), CRC Press (94), IEEE (74), and SuperStar (58). Serial records distributed include titles from EBSCO (172), Open access (124), China Academic journals (31), and China online journals (25). All distributions represent newly-added content to these packages.

CDL Acquisitions filled their Fiscal Assistant position. Angie Felix will start July 5. Angie currently works in the UCSD Library Collections Fiscal Management Unit (in the UCSD Library Acquisitions Department) and has been contributing time to CDL Acquisitions on a part-time basis since Brian Pierini’s departure. We look forward to her joining the team.

Until next month …

SCP monthly update May 2011

As a result of Donal’s special effort, we were able to send out records for the Springer 2011 e-book titles soon after CDL concluded their negotiations. These had been accumulating since January, and combined with a large batch of Springer German titles, this added up to 2258 records distributed for Springer in April. Other e-book record distributions included those from CRC Press (177), IEEE (140), Apabi (111), and SuperStar (71). Serial records distributed include titles from China online journals (75), WilsonWeb (63), Open access (60), and EBSCO (29). All distributions but the Springer German titles represent newly added content to these packages.

CDL Acquisitions has received a list of applicants for their Fiscal Assistant position (Brian’s position) and Adriana and her selection team plan to start interviewing candidates next week. SCP is back to full staffing with Donal returning from his medical leave.

Until next month …

SCP monthly update April 2011

Ongoing distribution of ScienceDirect Freedom Collection journals topped this past month’s serials distribution (301) with other top distributions coming from WilsonWeb (40), China online journals (28), China academic journals (25), and Wiley (20). These additions, except for the Freedom Collection, are for newly added content to existing packages. Monographs distributions include Adam Matthew Digital (698), Springer (349), Knovel (185), Apabi (176), SPIE (124), IEEE (91), and Safari (66). The Adam Matthew additions are for the collection Empire online and cover all the content available. The remaining additions, except for IEEE, represent current additions.

CDL finalized acquisition of the 2011 Springer titles in early April and these titles will receive top cataloging priority this quarter. A backlog of about 2000 titles accumulated since the year began. We anticipate completion of this cataloging by the end of the month. On the flip side, this means cataloging of titles in other monographic packages will take a back seat.

Donal is recovering well from very successful shoulder surgery. He started physical therapy April 15th and is planning to begin telecommuting when possible. There is a bit of news regarding our colleagues in CDL Acquisitions. First, we received the good news that Maria Figueroa gave birth to Benjamin Neal Powers on April 4th. Congratulations Maria! Also, congratulations to Brian Pierini who accepted a position as Fund Manager for the Office of Research Affairs at UCSD. We will be missing you greatly. In light of these absences, operations in CDL Acquisitions will be running on a shoe string for a few months. In addition to many CDL Acquisition tasks, Maria and Brian have been responsible for troubleshooting various coverage and package entitlements so their absences will affect SCP operations to some degree. All of us here at San Diego will work to minimize the impact on our users.

Until next month …

SCP monthly update March 2011

The top serial record distributions for February were EBSCO (233), Open Access (184), ScienceDirect (155), and LexisNexis (25). EBSCO and the Open Access additions represent newly added titles to existing packages keeping us current on those collections. All but a few of the ScienceDirect represent additions to the Freedom Collection leaving about 1,500 left to do. For monographs distributions, these include Adam Matthew Digital (556), IEEE (409), Springer (162), Apabi (103), and SuperStar (61). The Adam Matthew additions* cover two collections, Empire online and Everyday life & women in America, and cover all the content currently available that we will be cataloging. IEEE continues to post new content so while we are making headway, we estimate nearly 1,500 titles left for us to do plus any additions to come. We anticipate finishing up the Apabi reference title collection next month while with SuperStar, about 850 titles remain in our cue. For Apabi we will begin cataloging the e-book collection in April, about 4,300 titles plus any new purchases.

CRC Press clean-up is ongoing, but we believe we have work through the majority of the affected titles. The Materials Research Society still has some titles to move over to the new platform. We have tagged these as temporarily unavailable in the 856 field. As MRS makes their titles available, the notation will be removed from the 856s. Donal O’Sullivan will be undergoing shoulder surgery late in March and will be out for at least four weeks. He’s absence will affect our cataloging productivity of course, but remaining staff will take up as much of his work as possible. His absence will mostly affect the cataloging of monographs.

Until next month …

*Please note the following correction to the SCP March 2011 update. The Adam Matthew February additions cover only the first of the two collections namely Everyday life & women in America. The records for Empire Online are being distributed during March. Sorry for any confusion caused.

SCP monthly update February 2011

First, a few linking issues to alert you to. As has been announced before, CRC Press did a review of their monographs to “realign” them better into their subject databases. This means that some titles have moved from one NetBase into another. In some cases this might be to an unsubscribed NetBase. Most of the titles affected were in EngNetBASE. Initially, CRC informed us that we would lose access to any titles moved into unsubscribed NetBases. However, CRC Press later announced that these titles would be made available in a supplemental NetBase. SCP has received a title list of titles affected in EngNetBASE and staff is working on updating records for these titles, pointing to the supplemental database where appropriate. Unfortunately, we have not yet secured lists of titles affected for the other NetBases. Until we get these lists, there may be cataloged titles with non-functioning links. Please report these to SCP as encountered so that we may update the records.

The other package experiencing linking issues is Materials Research Society. In this case, the vendor has moved the content to a new platform, Cambridge; the old platform is no longer operational. SCP has updated all the links to point to the new platform; however, MRS stated that migration of all the content would not be complete until February 11th. Presumably this has occurred, however, if you encounter any MRS titles with non-functional links, please report them to SCP.

A reminder that negotiations with Springer are still stalled so you will not be seeing any 2011 titles until terms are resolved. We did distribute some 2011 titles by mistake. We believe these have been identified and deletes sent, but if you discover any, please let us know so we may remove them. Also, when searching the Springer site you and your patrons may find access is enabled to some 2011 titles in series like Lecture Notes in Computer Science. We are not sure why, but technically, we shouldn’t have this access and SCP will not be sending out any records for these until the negotiations are settled. However, you will still see some new Springer cataloging as we work through the pre-2011 German language titles.

The JSC has reviewed our suggested cataloging priorities for this quarter and established them as follows:

New content from currently licensed journal packages (transfers, adds, etc.)
Other open access resources (by request only)
CRC Press clean-up
ScienceDirect Freedom Collection
Springer German language E-books
IEEE Conference Proceedings
UC supported open access resources (e.g. e-Scholarship, UC Image Service Collections, BioMedCentral)
New content from other licensed packages
LexisNexis
EBSCO MasterFile Premier

Our cataloging output for January reflects these priorities. The top serial record distributions were EBSCO (382), Open Access (106), WilsonWeb (39), LION (75), GenderWatch (50), LexisNexis (34), China Academic Journals (33), China Online Journals (33), JSTOR (32), and International Index to Black Periodicals (24). For monographs they were IEEE (458), SuperStar (100) and Apabi (60).

Until next month …

SCP monthly update January 2011

Greetings to all, and happy New Year’s, we hope those of you who attended ALA midwinter thoroughly enjoyed it and are safely back at home. As was probably the case with most catalogers, many SCP staff attended session regarding RDA. While the test results seem to lend a degree of optimism that the cataloging community might be able to work with RDA with a degree of success, two significant issues were raised that are areas of possible concern for SCP, the compatibility of RDA with the single record approach, and with the aggregator/provider neutral approach. If appropriate, CONSER and BIBCO will be examining the issues more thoroughly at the upcoming CONSER Operations meeting in May.

Many individuals attending the Continuing Resources Cataloging Committee forum express dismay at the possibility of losing both these cataloging strategies, but in particular, that implementing RDA would require us to create cataloging records for every single e-resource provider. This is exactly what CONSER and BIBCO has worked on these past several years to avoid and the sentiment that such a move would be a step back for technical and public services was noted. RDA testing analysis is only now beginning, so a reversal of current Program for Cooperative Cataloging policy on these two issues is far from being considered, stay tuned.

In spite of a short work month, a significant number of records got distributed in December. On the serials side SCP sent 217 EBSCO, 90 WilsonWeb, 54 Open access, 26 JSTOR, and 16 American Periodical Series titles. For monographs SCP sent 366 Springer, 123 Apabi, 116 SuperStar, 110 Knovel, 88 IEEE, 45 Alexander Street Press, and 42 Morgan & Claypool records. The 45 Alexander Street Press titles are titles from the North American Theatre collection.

Until next month …

SCP monthly update December 2010

I’m pleased to announce the establishment by Ivy Anderson of the E-Resources Workflow Efficiencies Task Group. This group is charged to “…examine Serials Solutions, SFX, OCLC, and III to review existing ERMS-SFX-SCP workflows for systemwide resources acquired and/or managed by the CDL and/or cataloged by SCP with the aim of improving efficiencies and reducing redundancies.” Given the number of systems used, we manage and maintain data rather redundantly; it is hoped this group will find practical ways to eliminate these redundancies. Group members are Becky Culbertson (SCP), Maria Figueroa (CDL Acquisitions), Adriana Moran (Chair, CDL Acquisitions), Adolfo Tarango (SCP, Ex Officio), and Margery Tibbetts (CDL). The complete charge is posted at http://www.cdlib.org/efficienciestaskgroup.

We cataloged a good chunk of LexisNexis journals in November (863 titles) as well as a fair group of serials titles from JSTOR (66), Periodicals Archive (66), EBSCO (37), and open access titles (39). Our monographic cataloging remained high with Springer (1274 titles) topping the list again. Other monographic distributions of note were for Synthesis (74), CRC Press (63), IEEE (43), SPIE (41), and CalDocs (40).

Due to a UCSD campus holiday closure, SCP operations will be closed from December 18th through January 2nd. The last SCP records file for the year will be posted December 13th. The first file of the new year will be posted January 3rd. Though many SCP staff will be attending the ALA midwinter conference which will be held the week right after the break, we do not anticipate it affecting SCP operations. If you are attending ALA midwinter and run into any of us, please say hi. Till then, we wish you a fun and relaxing holiday season and a prosperous new year.

Until next month …

SCP monthly update November 2010

We had another good month of monographs cataloging. Springer again tops the list with 301 titles, followed by CRC Press, 246 titles, and SuperStar, 105 titles. For the first time in awhile we’ve been able to work on LexisNexis and sent you 353 titles. Becky finished off the remaining titles from the recently licensed JSTOR Arts & Sciences VIII collection, 36 titles, as well a group from the American Periodical series, 34 titles. We received news from OCLC that they processed our files and created the LHRs for all the serials cataloged by SCP. If you check titles via the Connexion browser interface, you can view the LHRs created. We received a report on their processing of our files and are reviewing it. It looks like out of nearly 31,000 titles, only 15 had problem records. In case you’re wondering, that’s about .05%, which seems incredibly good. Barring discovery of any major issues in reviewing the OCLC report, we will be implementing a weekly process for creating new and updating existing LHRs.

I’m very pleased to report that we have successfully recruited for our vacant LA IV half-time position. Annie Ross accepted our offer and she will begin with SCP November 15th. Annie has been working for the UCSD Metadata Services Department in various units over the past several years, but mostly she’s been involved with work on the Archivist’s Toolkit. More relevant to her future duties within SCP, she has been cataloging online monographs for UCSD. Welcome Annie, we look forward to you joining the team. Another staffing update, for the past several weeks a recent San Jose State University library school graduate has been volunteering for SCP. Abby Lowery, currently working for UCSD’s Access Services Department, is donating eight hours per week cataloging electronic monographs and serials. This is a wonderful win-win as Abby gains valuable real-life cataloging experience and in the process, we get lots more titles cataloged. Thanks Abby.

Until next month …

SCP Monthly Update October 2010

SCP cranked out the monographs in September with, among other smaller package additions, 1295 Springer, 315 CRC Press, and 122 SuperStar records sent. For journals, the most notable distribution was for JSTOR (103 titles). After some discussion, the SCP Advisory Committee agreed upon a mechanism for SCP to distribute mobile device optimized URLs. SCP will distribute these URLs in a 956 field which will carry the labeling phrase “Mobile device.” As each campus decides to display these links in their OPACs for their users, they will change the 956s to 856s in the records. At this time, only a very limited number of titles will have these links, and at the moment, they are all EBSCO databases. For ease of retrieval of these database records, SCP will also be adding a 793 field with the wording, depending on type, either “CDL licensed databases. Mobile optimized resource” or “CDL open access databases. Mobile optimized resources.”

UCSD has decided to implement Unicode for its character set encoding standard, moving away from MARC8. This should not affect campuses as the SCP record files will continue to be output in MARC8. Even so, the campuses will be advised when this is completed in case any issues arise with their processing of the SCP files. OCLC has not yet processed the SCP Local Holdings Record files though we have had recent correspondence indicating they may do so soon. Given that the original files were sent in May, we sent them a new file of records on October 12th.

Until next month …

SCP Monthly Update September 2010

This past month saw significant distributions of records for our Chinese resources: Century Journals Project (220 titles), China academic journals (152 titles), Chine online journals (78), Apabi online monographs (48), and SuperStar Chinamaxx online monographs (161 titles). For our other package there were a wide variety of minor additions to various journal packages such as JSTOR, Bepress, EBSCO, LexisNexis, and Project Muse. But our most notable output was another 672 Springer monographs. With this most recent Springer distribution, the backlog of Springer English language titles is considered cataloged and future efforts will be directed toward keeping current with newly posted titles. However we are aware that we have missed various titles and will review title lists and check the Springer site to identify these as we have time. To help us, if you find a Springer title that has been posted on the Springer site for more than three months that is not catalog, please report it to us for cataloging (send email to dosullivan@ucsd.edu). We are now focusing on the German language titles and you will start seeing many more records for those titles in the coming months.

I’m pleased to report that Donal O’Sullivan was transferred full-time to fill in Renee’s vacated position. Donal has worked with SCP several years now during which time he work as our lead cataloger for California documents, IEEE, and most recently, Springer, and been most critically of help in developing a variety of macros and batch processes that have increased SCP cataloging efficiencies significantly. Donal’s transfer leaves a half-time position vacant for which we are currently conducting a search. The application period closes September 30 and if all goes well, we should be making a hiring decision about two or three weeks later. In the meantime, Renee’s departure has permitted us an opportunity to adjust cataloging assignments. While all staff will continue to do a degree of serials and monographs cataloging, Becky Culbertson will now be the lead serials and integrating resources cataloger. Kate Garvey-Clasby will be supporting her with the serials cataloging, but will primarily manage SCP files processing, batch processes, global updates, and other similar duties. Donal O’Sullivan will take lead as the monographs cataloger and take point on PIDs and the PID server. When filled, the half-time cataloger will primarily assist with the monographs cataloging. Bie-Hwa Ma’s assignments will remain unchanged as our Chinese language cataloger.

Until next month …

SCP Monthly Update August 2010

Serial cataloging highlights for this past month are EBSCO MasterFile Premier (1156 titles), American Periodical Series (183 titles), and LexisNexis (57 titles). On the monographs side, two Alexander Street Press packages, Classical Music Library (2383 titles) and Twentieth Century North American Drama (1236 titles) were the highlights. Also of note were titles from Springer (156), SPIE E-Books (125), SuperStar (102), Knovel (79), Apabi (69), and CRC Press (30). Note that SPIE E-Books is a new package of e-monographs distinct from our older SPIE Digital Library conference proceedings package.

OCLC has not yet processed SCP files to create local holding records; however, we have been informed that they should do so by the end of August.

You may have heard through other channels that Renee Chin accepted a promotion and now works in the UCSD Serials Cataloging Unit. In closing this month’s update, here is a small tribute to her. Renee has the distinction of being the very first staff person hired to work for the Shared Cataloging Program. That was way back in June 2000. Those of us who have worked with her since know of her commitment to the Program and how difficult it will be to fill her shoes. During her tenure she has literally cataloged thousands of serials, thousands of monographs, and made tens of thousands of updates to both. She has been our resident expert on PIDs and the PID server, one of the most important components that makes SCP work. We sincerely wish her well, but will miss her greatly. Thank you Renee for all you have done for us and for UC.

Until next month …

SCP Monthly Update July 2010

Kudos go out to Becky Culbertson for presenting a poster at the NASIG annual conference held early in June. The poster described an automated technique, co-developed by Aileen Chang of The Scripps Research Institute and Teri Vogel of UCSD, for using End Note to insert table of contents notes into bibliographic records in OCLC. SCP staff used this technique to enrich OCLC master records for Springer titles and hope to be able to do so again in the near future.

Also at NASIG, Adolfo Tarango presented a bibliographic model incorporating FRBR concepts in a framework supporting a serial work authority record structure and a “work segment” catalog record. The proposed authority record represents the entire historical run of a serial, encompassing all its major changes as sequential 1XX entries, as the work. The work segment, defined as all the expressions and manifestations represented by a major change and corresponding to a 1XX entry in the authority record, is the entity cataloged. If you are interested in learning more about either Becky’s poster or Adolfo’s proposal, please contact them directly.

Wiley has entered into an agreement with IEEE to provide various titles through the IEEE platform. This past month SCP sent out 378 of these titles. Other e-monographs that went out were 246 open access UC Press, 174 SPIE conference proceedings, 90 SuperStar, 87 Springer, 86 CRC Press, 77 AIP, and 58 ScienceDirect titles. On the journals front, SCP sent out records for 171 APS, 47 Taylor & Francis, 39 COJ, 24 Wiley-Blackwell, and 20 EBSCO titles.

The CONSER program is undertaking a pilot project to catalog all the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) titles. SCP received the okay to participate in the pilot from Ivy Anderson and we’ll begin making contributions as soon as we get a list of titles from the CONSER coordinator. You may recall that SCP once was actively cataloging this collection as they were identified as key open access resources by many selectors across UC. We are pleased to begin cataloging them again and to contribute to the CONSER program. We also will be monitoring the contributions by our CONSER colleagues as they contribute original cataloging and we will do our best to harvest those from OCLC and distribute them to the campuses.

Until next month …