One-Stop Shopping for Journal Holdings: The

Ideal and the Reality

Presented by Janet Crum

Head, Library Systems & Cataloging

Oregon Health & Science University Library

http://www.ohsu.edu/library/staff/crumj

December 5, 2006

What I’ll CoverA. The universe of serial information, how

it has changed in recent years, and why that causes problems for users (I may not have a solution, but I can certainly admire the problem)

B. User expectations, usability, and user interfaces

C. What happens when we try to put A and B together: What can we do now? And what remains a problem?

D. A quick tour of OHSU’s imperfect solution

Every day at the reference desk…

How can I get this article?

Let me see if the library owns

that journal…

A complex answer to a simple question Library owns journal in print or microform Library has purchased electronic access to

journal Library has purchased aggregator

database that includes journal Journal (or desired article) may be freely

available online Article may be available via consortial

arrangement with another library (near or far)

Article may be available via interlibrary loan

So where does the patron have to look?

Catalog – print and microform holdings, some electronic holdings

A-Z list of electronic journals Online resources outside library:

Google Publisher site Open access database (e.g. DOAJ) Institutional repository Preprint archive/PubMed Central/other article repository Union/consortial catalog, WorldCat, etc.

ILL request form

The $64,000 question(s)

Should we provide one-stop shopping for all (or nearly all) of these cases?

If so, is it possible? If so, how?

But first, what is one-stop shopping?

User only needs to know about one place to look Integrate physical and electronic collections Move seamlessly from discovery to delivery (D2D

chain – Lorcan Dempsey) What matters isn’t where the user starts but

where the user finishes

Why one-stop shopping?

Aggregate demand: Every book (or journal) its reader1

Lower transaction costs for user and library: Save the time of the reader – and the library staff2

Consider principles of web usability Consider principles of user behavior

1-2. Dempsey, Lorcan (2006). Libraries and the long tail: some thoughts about libraries in a network age. D-Lib Magazine 12(4).

Web usability:Don’t make me think!

Principles of web usability relevant to this discussion1: “Don’t make me think” “Instructions must die” “Satisficing” = satisfy + suffice “It doesn’t matter how many times I have to

click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice.”

Bottom line: If they have to ask for help – or read instructions – we’ve failed.

1 Krug, Steve. Don’t Make Me Think. 2nd ed. New Riders. 2005.

Why one-stop shopping? User behavior

From 2003 OCLC Environmental Scan: Focus on user’s point of view, not the library’s Users like self-service applications in libraries “Librarians cannot change user behavior and

so need to meet the user”

The Dilemma

We need to design systems that guide users to journals without making them think, read, attend an instruction session, or ask a librarian for help

The process can’t be overly complicated or require (much) training, but…

Serials are inherently complicated and have become more so in recent years

What to do…

How far should we go?

Free articles

Free journals

Purchased aggregated collections

Print and individual e-journals

How far can we go? What we can do now

Integrate print and electronic holdings, including aggregator titles and some free things

Use link resolvers to direct users to print and electronic holdings, some free stuff, consortial catalogs, ILL request forms, search engines

Consider one-stop shopping an ideal to be approached but never quite reached

Integrate print and electronic2 options

Journals database separate from catalog Print and electronic in the catalog

The case for the catalog

Allows library collections to be truly integrated

More sustainable over the long term Devote local efforts to partnering with

vendors rather than developing ever-more-complicated local systems

Exciting advances in the works for catalogs. Shouldn’t our journal collections be included?

How far can we go?

Free articles

Free journals

Purchased aggregated collections

Print and individual e-journals

Two challenges

Bibliographic control (or lack thereof)Bibliographic control (n.): “The operation

or process by which recorded information is organized or arranged and thereby made readily retrievable.”1

Tradeoff between selection and workload

1. Chan, Lois Mai. Cataloging and Classification: An Introduction. 2nd ed. 1994.

A continuum of bibliographic control

Good Poor

Tradeoff between selection and workload

Big aggregated collections often contain titles outside the library’s usual collecting scope (e.g. Jack and Jill)

Easier to load them all than to pick and choose

But loading them all clutters your catalog/journal list

And scope doesn’t always predict use (e.g. OHSU’s People problem)

Link resolver as compromise? Link resolver offers compromise approach

Link to some materials with poor bibliographic control - but may be difficult to offer article-level linking

Way to provide access to some aggregated collections with less work

Could link to holdings available via consortial arrangements

Not quite one-stop shopping but still provides access

BUT too many links confuse users – where to draw the line?

AND link resolvers don’t always work correctly

OHSU’s solution http://catalogs.ohsu.edu ERM

Have loaded all electronic journals purchased or acquired via aggregated collections

Plan to load selected collections of free journals soon Web interface

Journal scope A-Z browse from catalog data EBSCO A-Z list for free journals Usability testing underway

Link resolver – WebBridge Article-level linking when possible; otherwise journal-level linking for all holdings Journal-level linking for free collections

Front page of OHSU journal scope

Journal bibliographic display

Resource and license display

Back to the journal scope for another title search…

ERM brief bibliographic record

Title browse from journal scope

A-Z browse with live data from catalog

•Uses Cold Fusion to query catalog via Oracle tables

•Can limit to electronic or limit by location for print

•Links to catalog record so we don’t have to parse holdings data

•Enables us to offer title browse without maintaining data in more than one place

Link to free e-journals

Link to free e-journals from EBSCO A-Z

Free e-journals from EBSCO A-Z

WebBridge link in PubMed

WebBridge menu of links

•OHSU-only links go directly to article

•Free links go to journal – compromise between workload and access

To Sum Up

Today technology allows us to Integrate print and electronic in a single resource

(preferably the catalog) Use link resolvers to direct users to print and electronic

holdings, some free stuff, consortial catalogs But many barriers and questions remain What should we do? Philosophical questions about the

mission and purpose of the library and its catalog What can we do?

Technical limitations Lack of bibliographic control Workload

Key points The landscape of journal literature is

more complex now than it was in the print-only world

But users expect more simplicity and do not want to think (much)

One-stop shopping is a Good Thing if it can be done without excessive complexity for the user

One-stop shopping is an ideal we’ll never fully achieve (think universal bibliographic control for journal articles)

We can achieve a certain amount of one-stop shopping now, but there’s much that’s still difficult

How far we go toward this goal should be based on library mission and user needs

Questions and comments?

For more information: Download slides and notes:

http://www.ohsu.edu/library/staff/crumj/nwiug2006/one_stop_shopping.zip E-mail me! crumj@ohsu.edu Read the long version of this presentation:

Crum, J. One-stop shopping for journal literature. Manuscript submitted for publication. Submitted for inclusion in Yu, H. & Breivold, S. (Eds). (in press). Handbook of Research on Library Electronic Resource Management. Idea Group Reference.

Thanks!