[Eril-l] Procedures (and/or documentation) for matching e-journal entitlements lists against knowledge base coverage lists?

[Athena Hoeppner]

Hi Rebecca,

We struggle with comparing entitlements and enabled access, too, for exactly the reasons you state. We always fall beck to hand checking. About a year ago we conducted a mass review of our SFX configuration, checking each current ejournal subscription with content enabled in our KB, and then verifying our access and holdings on the publisher platform – all checked “by-hand”, title by title.

SO, if someone emails a better process please share!

I hope the subscription agent, publishers, and KB vendors are listening – we need a better solution, and hooks so we can efficiently compare datasets from different sources. Some things I want:

  *   Consistent IDs for each journal on invoices, KBs, and vendor downloadable files (not just ISSN)
  *   Clear and consistent title history info:
     *   Current ISSNs with previous title and ISSN info and volume/years for each title/ISSN
     *   Display both current and historical title/ISSN on vendor sites. Lots of publishers show the full run for a journal under the current title and ISSN
  *   Accurate, custom entitlement reports upon request, with an option to show all-accessible or perpetually owned entitlements.

Athena

Athena Hoeppner
athena at ucf.edu
eResources Librarian
UCF, Orlando FL, 32016


From: Eril-l [mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org] On Behalf Of Rebecca Kemp Goldfinger
Sent: Monday, November 28, 2016 1:53 PM
To: eril-l at lists.eril-l.org
Subject: [Eril-l] Procedures (and/or documentation) for matching e-journal entitlements lists against knowledge base coverage lists?

(Cross-posted)

Dear Colleagues,

Do you have a good method or set of procedures worked out for comparing e-journal entitlements lists against what is activated and/or able to be activated in your knowledge base (KB)?  I'm defining "entitlements lists" as lists of the e-journal titles and the subscribed/purchased coverage to which we are entitled.  These lists can be e-mailed by publisher representatives or downloaded from publisher websites.  Our knowledge base is WorldCat KB, and the KB files we compare against are KBART files, but I am interested in looking at procedures that anyone may be using, regardless of which KB you have.

We have tried using Excel's VLOOKUP functionality to match titles by unique identifier, but it seems as though there are lots of problems ​in the vendor supplied data ​that make it hard to compare coverage (and even titles, sometimes). A few problems we've run up against are entitlements lists that do not show all title changes with separate titles, ISSNs, and coverage for all the titles in the history, and entitlements lists that show separate lines for each subscribed year of the title, which makes it hard to pull together the true start date and end date into one KB entry.

If you have a process that you think works pretty well for matching up entitlements with what's available in the KB, would you mind contacting me?  I would love to learn about your process(es) and the tools you use. We are especially interested in automating the process with Excel or Google Sheet templates, if anyone has been doing that.​ Or are there any workshops or presentations that anyone knows of on this topic?

Has anyone had any success in getting better entitlements data from publishers?

Let me know if I need to clarify my request. Also, if there is interest in my gathering together responses and sharing to the lists, I would be happy to do that.

Many thanks for considering,
Rebecca

Rebecca Kemp Goldfinger
Continuing Resources Librarian
University of Maryland, College Park
Acquisitions Department, Room 2200
McKeldin Library, 7649 Library Lane
College Park, MD 20742
301-405-9309<tel:301-405-9309>  (phone)
301-314-1200<tel:301-314-1200> (fax)

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