Organize, Simplify and Realize

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Organize, Simplify and RealizeMary Curran aa University of Ottawa, TSD, Morisset Library , 65University St., Ottawa, ON, K1N 9A5, USAPublished online: 12 Oct 2008.

To cite this article: Mary Curran (2006) Organize, Simplify and Realize, The SerialsLibrarian: From the Printed Page to the Digital Age, 51:1, 27-36

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E-VENTURES:NOTES AND REFLECTIONS

FROM THE E-SERIALS FIELD

Mary Curran, Editor

Organize, Simplify and Realize:Using the SFX Monthly Update Reports

to Manage New and Dropped Titles(or Nearly!) in a Matter of Minutes

Mary Curran

We spend a large portion of our lives trying to get organized, both onthe job and at home: weekly and long-term plans, spring and fall clean-ing at home, and strategic and day planners at work along with the rigor-ous examination of to-do lists and obligatory monthly clean-ups of new,added, deleted and changed aggregator e-journal titles. Technology hasbeen a great friend to us in our “orderliness” mission. We have softwareto organize our personal photos at home and SFX, ERMs and publish-ers’ lists at work to help with the never-ending task of “keeping up” (asif!) with monthly title adds, drops, etc. No question about it, we live in a“get organized” world with a whole industry supporting our efforts.

Mary Curran is Head of Cataloguing Services at the University of Ottawa, TSD,Morisset Library, 65 University St., Ottawa, ON K1N 9A5 (E-mail: [email protected]).

The Serials Librarian, Vol. 51(1) 2006Available online at http://www.haworthpress.com/web/SER

© 2006 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.doi:10.1300/J123v51n01_02 27

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http://www.haworthpress.com/web/SER

The simplicity movement has grown in popularity alongside this trendtowards organization, lending credence to the motto that it is much eas-ier to be organized if you keep things simple; in fact, less is more in theorganization game. In the last several E-Ventures columns we haveexamined various e-journal organizational tools. In “Get Organized,Part 1: Where Is That URL?” we looked at URL maintenance via pub-lisher delimited lists and alerting services. In “Get Organized, Part 2:Updating: Coverage, Title Changes, Cessations, etc.,” we examinedvarious alerting services that e-journal managers can subscribe to, or theURLS where information about coverage, title changes, cessations, etc.,can be found for the management of large e-journal aggregations.

A complete issue of The Serials Librarian–volume 47, no. 4, 2005,edited by Gary Ives and published simultaneously as a Haworth Pressmonograph under the title Electronic Journal Management Systems: Ex-periences from the Field–provided case studies and experiences of vari-ous libraries in their selection and implementation of, by far, one of themost popular types of e-resource organizational tools to date: various in-house and vendor-purchased electronic resource modules, or, more popu-larly, ERMs. In an article in this special issue,1 Ives commented on TexasA&M University’s implementation of SFX and its parallel examinationof whether or not the library needed to continue to subscribe to a servicesuch as Serials Solutions with which there was some concern about qual-ity and completeness. Testing there showed that SFX was much moreeffective in many ways than a third-party service:

A review of these numbers and the underlying title lists show thatSFX is as comprehensive in its coverage as the other content track-ing services. Primarily, what currently does drop out on SFX aretitles with no ISSNs. The current version of SFX does not supportrecords that have no ISSNs, but this support is expected with Ver-sion 3. . . . With this reassurance concerning the completeness ofthe SFX KnowledgeBase, and the flexibility the system providesto add and modify records locally, we were quickly convinced thatwe had no need for a third party tracking service to augment SFX.2

After reading the ERM issue of The Serials Librarian and especiallyIves’ article quoted above, and in keeping with the “organize and sim-plify to realize short and long-term goals” motto that we’ve all been try-ing to adopt during this time of exponential change on the journaldelivery and management scene, I decided to try to exploit to their full-

28 THE SERIALS LIBRARIAN

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est the monthly updating resources within SFX for the next couple ofmonths. The results have been very gratifying! It was quick to get to-gether the various tools: time outlay thirty minutes. Helpful tools arebulleted below, although the process is so intuitive within SFX that theyare not essential:

• The relevant section in the SFX manual,• old training notes on shortcuts in manipulating text reports in Ex-

cel,• a Web-mounted PowerPoint presentation by Lieve Rottiers, SFX

Development Librarian at Ex Libris3 and• the main tools provided monthly by Ex Libris:

• the Monthly Text Reports in conjunction with• Monthly user documentation.

I was pleased to see that by dedicating between twenty and thirtyminutes monthly when one receives the Monthly Text Reports and cor-responding user documentation you can identify and keep up-to-datewith title adds and drops from the major subscribed aggregators such asElsevier, Springer, ProQuest, etc. After identification, changes/addi-tions can be made in the corresponding MARC records in the catalogueand on the Web list if the A-Z list available in SFX is not used. There’sno need to enumerate the major subscribed aggregators–they are thedaily bread of those involved in e-resource management, and these daysthat means just about every staff member in the library. Next steps at ourinstitution are to expand the easy procedures shared with you below toinclude aggregators for which our library has only selective subscrip-tions, for example, free-with-print aggregators such as IngentaConnect.However, keep it simple and grow on small successes, right?

Central to the monthly updating process for subscribed databaseswith SFX is an understanding of the concepts of the settings “Auto-Ac-tivation” and “Automatic update” at the Target Service level. After wemigrated to SFX version 3, we had an extensive discussion about thedifferences between these terms on the Ontario Council of UniversityLibraries (OCUL) listserv, and I thought I understood them. However,reading Rottiers’ definitions lent new meaning and made things crystalclear:

AutoActive. Setting AutoActive overrides the rule in the standardupdate which states that new Portfolios added to SFX KnowledgeBase during update will be added as inactive.

E-Ventures 29

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Automatic update. Setting Automatic update overrides the rule inthe standard update which states that database items with localchanges will not be updated or deleted automatically.4

Thus the first step is to ensure that new and dropped object portfoliosappear on the Monthly Text Reports of new, deleted and changed objectportfolios (the three essential reports for maintenance) as Active. Besure to double check that you have set up subscribed Target Serviceswith AutoActive. We noticed that there was a little fall out with thesesettings during the migration from version 2 to version 3, so verificationis advised.

After the monthly update has been applied to your server, the nextstep is to review the monthly update information provided by Ex Libris.This five- to six-page document gives instructions to apply the revision,a list of new sources, new targets and target services, deleted targets,new/updated/deleted portfolios in existing targets, etc. Since our updateis applied at the consortial level, I’ve always avoided the revision in-structions but have found the other sections very helpful in identifyingmajor new sources and targets that may require enabling at our institu-tion.

The next step is to go into the Admin Centre of your SFX instanceand run the applicable reports in the Download Text Reports area. Thereare two that are crucial and a third that is desirable:

1. Added Object Portfolio2. Deleted Object Portfolio3. Changed Object Portfolio (desirable).

Now, run the two (or three) reports and save them in a specially cre-ated Windows folder (e.g., SFX Reports). Naming the files with a des-ignation of the month of the update is very helpful for retrieval (e.g.,objaddoct2005).

Open Excel and the applicable report (e.g., objaddoct2005). This iswhere SFX training shortcuts come in handy. I must thank our Ex Libristrainer for having had the foresight to share these handy tips with us.Since the report is text, you will have to indicate that the file is Delim-ited, that the Delimiter is a Tab and then select Next and Finish.

Once the file is opened in Excel, you will get a huge file of Active andInactive Object Portfolios that has nonsensical data like in the InternalID and Object columns in Table 1.


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Selecting the Format icon on the Excel Toolbar and then Cells andNumbers and Decimal Places: 0 will change the same data to a moresane display, as in Table 2.

Next, eliminate or hide superfluous columns in a few keystrokes inExcel. This makes the list a little more manageable. Needs vary. I’vefound that for our purposes leaving the following columns is sufficient:EVENT, AVAILABILITY, OBJECT_ALT ID (ISSN), TARGET,TARGET_SERVICE, THRESHOLD GLOBAL and, of course, TITLE.If you don’t like the order, rearrange it, but the default is quite workable.For space reasons, I have excluded the EVENT and THRESHOLDGLOBAL columns from the example in Table 3.

Sorting the list is the next step. You do this by choosing the Data iconon the Excel toolbar and then by selecting Sort . . . Sort by AvailabilityAscending and then by Target Ascending. This will give you a list thatwill separate Active from Inactive titles listed alphabetically byaggregator (see Table 4).

The lists of Active Deleted Object Portfolios and Active Added Ob-ject Portfolios can be easily handled by limiting them to those with a“getFullTxt Target Service” and by cutting and pasting those left intotwo new Excel notebooks. These lists should then be passed along to theindispensable serials cataloguing and e-journal management team toverify and add, delete or change existing cataloguing records and e-journal lists to reflect the corresponding new titles, title changes anddropped titles as reported in the monthly update. Many of these mayhave already been done depending on whether you subscribe to alertingservices or have other tracking systems. Here at the University ofOttawa, we rely heavily on the Title Outputter tool for the OCUL con-sortium that can provide reports of new titles added to Scholars Portal

E-Ventures 31

TABLE 1. Nonsensical Display

Internal_ID Note Object

1.11E�14 9.55E�11

1.11E�14 9.55E�11

1.00E�15 9.55E�11

1.11E�14 1.11E�14

1.11E�14 9.55E�11

1.11E�14 9.55E�11

1.11E�14 1.11E�14

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by date and by publisher. This sounds like a cumbersome process, butmost institutions have grouped their titles by aggregator somewhere(e.g., in a Web list, ERM or in their ILS), so a review is fairly quick.

In June 2005, the University of Ottawa had 160 Active Added ObjectPortfolios of which 138 were from ProQuest. We do not bother to verifyProQuest titles since we subscribe to their monthly MARC record up-dating service. Two other added portfolios in June were from MUSE,two more were from JSTOR and eleven titles were from HeinOnline.


TABLE 3. List Before Sorting

AVAILABILITY OBJECT_ALT_ID

TARGET TARGET_SERVICE

TITLE

INACTIVE 0001-0340 WILSON_OMNIFILE_FT_MEGA

getFullTxt AB bookman’sweekly

INACTIVE 0001-0340 WILSON_OMNIFILE_FT_MEGA

getAbstract AB bookman’sweekly

INACTIVE 0001-0340 WILSON_OMNIFILE_FULLTEXT_SELECT

getAbstract AB bookman’sweekly

INACTIVE 0001-0340 WILSON_OMNIFILE_FULLTEXT_SELECT

getFullTxt AB bookman’sweekly

INACTIVE 0190-2946 PROQUEST_WILSON_EDUCATION_ABSTRACTS

getFullTxt Academe

INACTIVE 0889-025X PROQUEST_WILSON_APPLIED_SCIENCE_AND_TECH

getFullTxt ACI MaterialsJournal

INACTIVE 0889-3241 PROQUEST_WILSON_APPLIED_SCIENCE_AND_TECH

getFullTxt ACI structuraljournal

INACTIVE 0360-0300 PROQUEST_WILSON_APPLIED_SCIENCE_AND_TECH

getFullTxt ACM comput-ing surveys

TABLE 2. Sane Display

Internal_ID Note Object

111076000000000 954926000000

111021000000000 954926000000

1000000000000000 954925000000

111014000000000 110979000000000

110979000000000 954925000000

111040000000000111040000000000

954925000000110990000000000

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Since we subscribe to alerting services for these three aggregators, onlya cursory glance was given to our “A-Z by Project” list to ensure thatthey had not been missed. This left seven added titles to verify, add toour e-journal A-Z list which is still not produced using SFX because ofbilingual issues left to resolve with our institution, and ultimately to cat-alogue and trace using the 7XX MARC linking fields if they repre-sented title changes or were available in another format. In the samemonth we had seven deleted Active object portfolios to follow up. Table5 is a chart of the Active added and deleted object portfolios in the Uni-versity of Ottawa SFX instance from June to September 2005. We haveroughly 20,000 titles activated in SFX, of which over 14,000 are paidsubscriptions.

Many of the changes highlighted in Table 5 had been handled by staffprior to the update by means of various alerting or MARC record services

E-Ventures 33

TABLE 4. List After Sorting

AVAILABILITY OBJECT_ALT_ID

TARGET TARGET_SERVICE

TITLE

ACTIVE 1081-1826 CELL_PRESS getFullTxt Studies in nonlineardynamics andeconometrics

ACTIVE 1389-1723 ELSEVIER_SD_ELSEVIER

getFullTxt Journal of bioscienceand bioengineering

ACTIVE 0742-4248 GALEGROUP_IT_EXPANDED_ACADEMIC_ASAP

getFullTxt Clues

ACTIVE 0014-7370 GALEGROUP_IT_EXPANDED_ACADEMIC_ASAP

getFullTxt Family process

ACTIVE 0308-2342 ROYAL_SOCIETY_OF_CHEMISTRY

getFullTxt Journal of chemicalresearch. Synopses

ACTIVE 0302-3451 WILSON_LIBRARY_LITERATURE_AND_INFORMATIO

getFullTxt The Audiovisuallibrarian

ACTIVE 0024-6867 WILSON_LIBRARY_LITERATURE_AND_INFORMATIO

getFullTxt The bulletin

INACTIVE 1081-1826 CELL_PRESS getTOC Studies in nonlineardynamics andeconometrics

INACTIVE 0360-3520 GALEGROUP_IT_BUSINESS_ASAP

getFullTxt Body fashions/intimate apparel

INACTIVE 0164-3533 GALEGROUP_IT_BUSINESS_ASAP

getFullTxt New Englandbusiness

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or by the OCUL Title Outputter. Where SFX was particularly helpfulwas in chronicling new and dropped titles for those databases forwhich we did not have subscriptions via our OCUL consortium, orMARC record updating services such as for our ProQuest databases,or subscribed alerting services. Examples include such targets as GaleExpanded Academic, Miscellaneous Free E-Journals, HighWire PressFree E-Journals, BioOne, EBSCO ATLA Serials, American Theologi-cal Libraries–those which, in my estimation, are the most difficult tomanage.

Once the separate notebooks have been made for the Active deletedand added object portfolios, one is left with usually a very large list ofInactive portfolios, some of which you may subscribe to partially andothers which you do not subscribe to at all. Since the list is alreadysorted alphabetically by aggregator, the easiest thing is to move downthe list and delete all listings for non-subscribed databases. This usuallynarrows the list from several tens of thousands to a handful. For simplic-ity’s sake, I have been limiting the list of Inactives to IngentaConnectadded object portfolios. I pass this list on to our Serials AcquisitionsUnit to follow up to see if we have the print subscription and if so, toregister us for the electronic access if we are not already registered.

Dear Serials Librarian reader, if you have actually had the courage tocontinue this far in the column, you are probably saying to yourself,“How can anyone call this process easy?” I assure you that the processis a simple one allowing you to identify adds, drops and changes in themajor subscribed databases in a matter of minutes following the abbre-viated checklist given in the next section. Indulge yourself and try thisseven-step procedure the next time you receive a monthly update fromSFX.


TABLE 5. Adds and Drops at the University of Ottawa from June-September2005

DATE OF UPDATE # of ADDED ACTIVE OBJECTPORTFOLIOS

# of DELETED ACTIVE OBJECTPORTFOLIOS

June 160 7

July 133 10

August 53 6

September 83 7

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QUICK CHECKLIST

1. Double check that you have set up subscribed Target Serviceswith AutoActive.

2. Run the monthly update on your server and then run the Added,Deleted and Changed Object Portfolio reports from the AdminCentre, saving them in a Reports folder.

3. Open the report in Excel selecting the defaults: Delimited,Delimiter–Tab, Next and Finish.

4. On the toolbar choose Format, Cells Numbers, Decimal Places: 05. Eliminate or hide any superfluous columns and then select from

the toolbar: Data . . . Sort . . . Sort by Availability ascending andthen by Target Ascending.

6. Create separate notebooks for the Active deleted and addedportfolios and pass them on to your serials cataloguing and e-re-source management team for follow-up.

7. Quickly scan the list of Inactives arranged alphabetically by pub-lisher and pass on to the e-resource acquisition team any titlesthat you may want to follow up to see about your entitlement(e.g., IngentaConnect is free with print subscription).

In conclusion, the use of the Monthly Text Reports in the SFX AdminCentre is a very effective and simple e-management tool to detect addedand dropped titles for subscribed databases. Preliminary testing atTexas A&M University shows that SFX is “as comprehensive in itscoverage as other content tracking services” such as Serials Solutions.5Use of the Monthly Text Reports for a four-month period at the Univer-sity of Ottawa has demonstrated that this tool is an efficient adjunct tothe various alerting and updating services such as digests and publisheralerts, the OCUL Title Outputter and the ProQuest MARC recordupdating service. SFX, of course, cannot be as current as any of thesepublisher-provided services. Nevertheless, if your library wants to keepthings very simple and if up-to-the-minute currency is not an issue, theexclusive use of the SFX monthly reports which are probably dated byabout a month seems to be a viable management tool for title adds,drops and changes. As for renewals and renewal ticklers . . . those fortu-nate enough to have ERMs in place have other solutions. Those of uswho are waiting for the implementation of an ERM in our libraries stillhave plenty of room to dream of brighter horizons and simpler days tocome!

E-Ventures 35

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NOTES

1. Gary Ives, “Transition to E-Journals at Texas A&M University, 1995-2004”TheSerials Librarian 47, no. 4 (2005): 71-78.

2. Ibid, p 77-78. Author’s note: Version 3 of SFX does indeed allow the addition of ti-tles with no ISSNs into the Knowledgebase, but now the task of going back through oldlists of non-ISSN e-journal titles and adding them is high on many SFX subscribers’ to-do lists.

3. Lieve Rottiers, “Olybris, Ex Libris Seminar 2005, KOS, April 2005” available athttp://www.nd.edu/~aleph/doc/olybrissfx2005/documents/SFX.KB.001.ppt

4. Ibid., available at http://www.nd.edu/~aleph/doc/olybrissfx2005/documents/SFX.KB.001.ppt

5. Gary Ives, p. 77.


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Organize, Simplify and Realize