The Integration of Serials Into Institutional Repositories

presented at the 17th annual North Carolina Serials Conference

April 11, 2008

Mary GrenciInterim Head & Serials Team Leader

Metadata Services and Digital ProjectsUniversity of Oregon Libraries

mgrenci@uoregon.edu

Available online at: https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/dspace/handle/1794/5914

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The main issues

• Placement of serial title in IR hierarchy

• Collection/community names

• Organization of serial issues

• Organization of issue content

• Construction of item titles

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Caveats

• Issues & choices tied to IR software• Impacted by earlier decisions about overall IR

organization, content & workflow• Not a decision flowchart – many things must

be considered at the same time• There is no one correct answer!

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Questions to think about

• What type of content is it?

• How will the content be used?

• Is order important?

• Are relationships between titles important?

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More questions to think about

• How much control can the IR manager have?• How much control does the IR manager want

to have?• How do each of these questions relate to

each of the main issues listed on Slide 2?• Do you (does your institution) really care?

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Placement of serial title in overall IR hierarchy

• How is other IR content organized?• Is the title related to already existing IR

content?– Responsible body?– Related titles?– Topical relationship?– Do any of these matter?

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Placement of serial title in overall IR hierarchy

• Who is responsible for the serial?• Are there related publications?

– Also being placed in IR?– Not being added to IR now but may be later?– Never being added to IR?

• Is the title still being published?

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Findings of a study of 6 DSpace IRs, performed Aug.-Sept. 2007*

Figure 1: Integration of serial titles into sample IRs

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1 serial title = 1 collection

1 serial title = 1 community

More than 1 serial title in 1collection

Organized first by unit/dept., then1 serial issue = 1 collection

Not enough information to see apattern

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Community/collection names

• Effect on:– Item record title field– Display order– Title recognition/findability

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Community/collection names• What will be included in the

community/collection?– 1 serial title– Multiple titles, all related– Multiple titles, some not related

• Should the name reflect the contents? If yes, how?

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Community/collection names

• Is there a relationship with an already existing collection or community?– Responsible body?– Related title(s)?

• Can/should contextual information be added to the name? (e.g. publication dates)

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Community/collection names

• How will issues & issue content be organized?

• Is chronological order important? – At collection level? – At item level?

• Is the title still being published?

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Organization of serial issues

• Order of issues in browse displays

• Closely related to:– Placement of serial title in IR hierarchy– Community/collection names– Organization of issue content– Construction of item title

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Organization of serial issues

• Impacted by:– Major title changes– Minor title changes– Style of numbering– Placement of numbering in name/title fields

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Organization of issue content

• Order of content in title browse display

• Closely related to construction of title in item metadata records

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Organization of issue content

• Will each issue be equal to one IR item?

• Will each article be equal to one IR item?– In original page number order?– Alphabetical by article title?

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Construction of item title

• Effects title recognition/findability

• Closely related to all previously discussed issues and questions

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Construction of item title• Is display order important? If yes, which type:

– Chronological?– Page number?– Alphabetical by article title?

• Is transcription important? If yes, which type:– Serial title?– Serial numbering?– Page numbers?– Article title?

• Probably mutually exclusive!

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Construction of item title

• Impact of minor title changes

• Numbering as part of title

• Page numbers as part of title

• Other additions to the title

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Summary

• There are lots of things to think about when adding a serial run to an IR

• All the questions relate to each other

• Various institutions have chosen to do things in different ways

• There is no one true answer!

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Note* The study sample included the following IRs, in order by size

according to ROAR (accessed: August 29, 2007): – University of Michigan's Deep Blue:

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/index.jsp– Ohio State University's Knowledge Bank:

https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/index.jsp– Georgia Tech's SMARTech: http://smartech.gatech.edu/– Cornell University's eCommons@Cornell:

http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/index.jsp– Oregon State University's ScholarsArchive@OSU:

http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/dspace/index.jsp– University of Oregon's Scholars' Bank:

http://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu.