[Eril-l] KB discrepancies

Thu Oct 8 12:31:52 PDT 2015

I have the same problem.  I manage 3 KBs: Serials Solutions, OCLC WMS, and now we are trialing EBSCO Discovery Service.  To set up the OCLC KB, I exported our SerSol KB.  I got very upset when I saw the results of this automatic process, as the number of titles for particular collections did not match.  Example: SerSol says Academic OneFile has 7,635 titles.  OCLC says Academic OneFile has 16,950 titles.  I had multiple tickets open with OCLC, and 2 long phone conversations with Support.  Eventually, I learned that SerSol and OCLC count the number of titles differently.  SerSol only counts the number of full-text titles, whereas OCLC counts all titles (A&I + full-text) in a collection.

To go a bit deeper, I worried that OCLC put our holdings on all 16,950 titles in Academic OneFile, and therefore we would get ILL requests for tons of journals that we do not get full-text.  Thankfully, no, that is not the case.  The KB is smart enough to attach holdings only to those journals that are available full-text in the collection.

Another can of worms: Because of budget constraints, we are canceling many print titles for which we receive the full-text in a database or vendor package.  We worry about the effects on ILL.  We’re pretty sure ILL (via OCLC –- WorldShare ILL and ILLiad) only looks at Local Holdings Records (LHRs), aka Union Listing.  If we close out our print titles on LHRs, it will look like we can’t lend many journals, even though we have the full-text.  Why can’t ILL land look at OCLC KB holdings, instead of, or in addition to, Local Holdings Records?  OR, put it this way: do you enter your electronic holdings (i.e., KB holdings) on your LHRs?

Thanks for any insights.

Mary Brunelle
Assumption College

From: Daniel Peterson [mailto:dcpcreations at gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 08, 2015 1:54 PM
To: eril-l at lists.eril-l.org
Subject: Re: [Eril-l] KB discrepancies

I'm not sure how SFX and OCLC KBs work, but issues I can think of to take into account are:
1. Do the title lists include only full text content, or full text and A&I titles
2. If full text only, how comprehensive does that full text need to be ("selected full text" titles cause confusion with link resolvers)
3. How are journal title changes tracked? Single entry for all title versions, or separate for each title/ISSN variant?
4. Conference proceedings and monographic serials can be a mess
Daniel

On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 10:40 AM, Steve Oberg <steve.oberg at wheaton.edu<mailto:steve.oberg at wheaton.edu>> wrote:

I'm managing SFX as well as the OCLC WMS KB. I don't intend to open the can of worms of: why have more than one? So...If you are in a similar situation to mine, and have insights about the following common scenario, I'd love to hear your perspective.

KB #1 has a particular collection. KB #2 has the same collection. Yet the number of individual titles within each varies wildly. Here's a specific example: SFX has a target for EBSCOHOST_PSYCBOOKS that has 2,183 portfolios. The same thing in OCLC WMS KB (called a collection, with title, EBSCOhost PsycBOOKS) has 4,021 titles in it.

If the source for each KB is a vendor feed of some sort, isn't it logical to expect the numbers to be somewhat close? But they frequently aren't. I'm not sure there is a ready solution to the problem but I'm wanting to at least have a better grasp of the possible reasons for these discrepancies.

Thanks,

Steve

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Daniel Peterson
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