Multi-Part E-Collections

See Best Practices for Decision Pages and Tags for groups

Legend: not started STALLED decided

Recommendation

The E-Resources Operations Sub-team initially recommended that in principle users should be provided with collection-level records for multi-part e-collections for discovery in UC Library Search. Collection-level records for Tier 1 and 2 resources should be managed by CDL in the Network Zone, so that individual campuses do not need to manage their own copies of the records. Although CDL hoped to provide a more in-depth needs analysis, ERES acknowledges that there is wide variation in the nature of our e-collections, so it is not possible to have a single recommendation for how to treat the collections and that experience with local use cases show that goals for outcome can vary by product and requestor. Cataloging decisions for migrated collections might need case-by-case examination to determine patterns, in consultation with relevant stakeholders (DISC, CKGs, reference, instructional design, user experience). Collectively, all relevant stakeholders need to identify user experience goals and generate a decision process for future collections, potentially manage as a stage of the acquisitions process for product specific decisions, or other model. Given this request came shortly after the formation of SILS, some period of time was provided CDL in order to become more familiar with the Alma/Primo record structure. However, in review of the delay, ERES recognizes that CDL output is only one factor in the outcome of this work and ultimately ERES has too narrow of a perspective to understand public services, reference and instruction needs. ERES recommends escalation to OT for a broader examination.

Impact

Background

E-collections in Alma are structured to support back-end management, and are may not support discovery. Collections containing multiple modules often have separate entries for each module, and Alma collection descriptive records have been described as ‘not acceptable for discovery,’ so from a cataloging standpoint, the action to follow Alma instructions to unsuppress the collection-level bibliographic records results in both metadata management and discovery problems. Requests are usually made by library colleagues outside of technical services and have a specific use case they are trying to fulfill. This type of environmental scan to develop use cases and test with display scenarios exceeds the scope of ERES expertise.

Dependencies

1. Given the varying nature of Tier 1, 2 and 3 e-collections, it is difficult to preemptively develop any and all possible cataloging models, and determine which model should be applied to each multi-part collection. This may require a permanent or sustained examination to consider all factors and develop workflows.

2. Since there will not be a one-to-one relationship between the collection-level records and the individual Alma collections, managing the bibliographic records will need to be accomplished in consideration of local collections and will require consideration.

Questions to consider (ERES generated)

1. How much ongoing review will be needed for:

   1. brand-new collections?

   2. new “modules” of an existing collection?

   3. existing collections that may need different treatment?

   4. collections that move between different providers?

2. How will the general/parent/umbrella bibliographic record be linked to the relevant collections it is used for? Will that information be available to end-users in UC Library Search, or limited to Alma? In Alma, will campus staff be able to see the information, or would it be limited to the NZ?

Action Log

Example of a multi-series database:

Open

Open