Computer cataloging of electronic journals in unstable aggregator databases: the Hong Kong Baptist University Library experience

摘要

The rapid growth of aggregator databases in the past decade has allowed libraries to enrich their collections and offer unprecedented access to full-text journals for users. Subscription to large aggregator databases such as Academic Universe, Academic Search FullText Elite, and ProQuest Direct can expand a library's access to thousands of new journal titles in full-text form overnight--a phenomenon not possible in the environment of print subscriptions. At the same time, this new and exciting opportunity has brought some highly challenging bibliographic control problems for librarians in terms of how to identify, display, and maintain the currency of titles in aggregator databases in a manner that is user-oriented and cost-effective. Much has been written in the professional literature on the issues, problems, possible solutions, and recommendations related to the bibliographic control of aggregator databases. Two very useful recent publications on this topic are "Aggregation or Aggravation? Optimizing Access to Full-Text Journals" and the Final Report of the Library of Congress Program for Cooperative Cataloging Standing Committee on Automation's Task Group on Journals in Aggregator Databases (PCC Task Group). The former gives an excellent overview of the "benefits of aggregations, the challenges of describing aggregated full-text articles, and several alternatives for integrating print and electronic journal titles in library catalogs" (Calhoun and Kara 2000). The latter outlines its working assumptions and a set of recommendations on record creation and record maintenance, complete with proposed data elements for different methods of generating records for the titles in an aggregator database (PCC 2000).