OCLC's claims component: Implementation at CMU

The implementation of OCLC's claims component represents a significant investment in time and money in order to obtain automatic claims or identification of needed issues for perhaps three-quarters of the serial collection. At this early stage, a lack of experience and sureness in applying the component's capabilities to the vagaries of serial publications demands a certain fortitude. A number of concerns appear valid and cast a shadow on the hoped-for results. Implementation further means the establishment of a program for updating vital parts of the component. The training of a specialized team schooled in the nuances of publication schedules and in the synthesis of related library records, and capable of making possibly costly judgments forms the component's foundation. This followed by the training of check-in and related support staff will drive the component and determine its eventual success.     

Serials and the OCLC Acquisitions Subsystem

Abstract

Academic library consortia, faced with requirements of assessment and accountability, are increasingly pressured to measure the impact of their networked electronic services. Studies on usage of electronic library resources and electronic journals, in particular, proliferate; relatively few focus on the academic library consortium. This paper gives an overview of one assessment tool, MINES for Libraries®, as implemented in the Scholars Portal service of the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL). The novel contributions of this study are twofold: firstly, the creation of peer groups within an academic consortium for comparison purposes, and secondly, the use of regression analysis to explore the correlation between usage and three separate variables outside the MINES survey — library print holdings, library acquisitions budget, and sponsored research revenue.     

INNOVACQ: Serials control at Boalt Hall

Many changes in the Law School Library have occurred during this past year because of INNOVACQ. Within the Serials/Acquisitions Section, almost all the routines and procedures have been radically redefined to allow for the computerization of serials control. There have been some staff reassignments and shifts in responsibility, and in most instances, old tasks and manual file maintenance have been done away with completely and replaced by work at a VDT. Naturally, the impact of INNOVACQ has also been felt in the Cataloging Section, and the instant availability of serials check-in and routing information in public services has certainly added a level of service that was never possible before. In addition, the immediate and up-to-date fiscal information has been a boon for both the library's collection development officers and the Library administration.Various staff members throughout the year have been working to clean up and upgrade different parts of the serials files and to add or exchange better information in a number of fields in each record. Past payment history has been keyed into over 2/3 of the records in the file. The records for all the loose-leaf services contracted for by the Library are not fully online.All the records for our California documents have been edited and check-in cards have been created for this large and obviously important part of the file. Conversion of the U.S. documents which had been deferred at the very beginning of the fiscal year, has begun and most entries now can be checked-in and claimed online.All invoices (both serials and monographs) for this fiscal year have been processed on INNOVACQ, and while there are still some vendor and fund anomalies, Boalt has better, more comprehensive — and certainly more accurate — financial records than ever before.A massive editing and claiming project has recently gotten under way. All titles on INNOVACQ are being checked against the shelf list to make sure that all the bibliographic elements in each record are in sync and are presented in a standard, retrievable (punctuation and spacing count in INNOVACQ) format. Routine claiming (as part of serials check-in) has been in place for some time now, and that activity was begun when that feature was delivered. A second part of the editing project, is however, to get the thousands of blank boxes out of the check-in screens where they will remain as claimable items until some sort of purging action is taken. The files are now being gone through (a simple command in INNOVACQ can allow one to review every check-in record in the system), our holdings are being checked on the shelves, and decisions to claim or replace the missing pieces are being made. We anticipate that this editing/ claiming project will take approximately half a year.The INNOVACQ system was pretty exciting when we first saw it demonstrated, and we were eager then to incorporate it into our technical processing activities here at Boalt. If anything, our enthusiasm has grown as the capabilities of INNOVACQ have been realized. Enhancement and refinement — some at our prompting, others by the design staff at Innovative Interfaces — over the past year have resulted in what we believe to be the most comprehensive and easy-to-use serials control system available. Our confidence was manifested when we shifted all of our acquisitions activities from RLIN to INNOVAQ at the beginning of our fiscal year in mid-1984.Many tasks remain for the Law Library in making the best use of the INNOVACQ system. The rapid acceptance by the public service staff and users has been heartening, and the continuing work to clean up the Serials Records has proven fruitful. System performance and maintenance have been outstanding, and we are excited about various possibilities for future growth. It has not been a simple nor uncomplicated process, but the gains realized by the Law library have been substantial.     

CORAL User Group Meeting at NC Serials 2019

Abstract

This article reports on the CORAL User Group meeting at the NC Serials 2019 conference. This was the first CORAL user group meeting to take place at the NC Serials conference. The speakers provided updates from CORAL committees and highlighted new features in the most recent CORAL release. They also shared how CORAL has been used in NC State University Libraries and East Carolina University to support their e-resource workflow management.     

“Serials at Warp Speed: Navigating Transitions,” the 2007 North Carolina Serials Conference

Reports on four major serials conferences, the 2007 North Carolina Serials Conference, the 2007 meeting of the Ohio Valley Group of Technical Services Librarians, the Canadian Library Association’s 2007 Pre-Conference, and the 2007 North American Serials Interest Group Conference.