[Eril-l] Discovery tools and Ebsco/ProQuest

[Crago, Rebecca D]

Hi Ann, 

We also use EDS and have not found a way to fully integrate Proquest content. You can make content searchable at a book/journal title level for anything that Proquest provides MARC records for, but not at an article level. 

EBSCO will tell you that in order to do this, the library must catalog those MARC records from Proquest databases into your integrated catalog, which is indexed in EDS. However, we found many drawbacks to cataloging the Proquest MARC records, namely 1.) they are stripped of metadata that we find essential as a cataloging standard and 2.) as Proquest continuously removes content from their databases, it's difficult/cumbersome to keep up with accuracy of holdings in our catalog.

After some pointed back-and-forth with EBSCO about why they can't load Proquest MARC records I supply them (there is one piece of metadata they say is not included in their records, but is required in EDS), I was able to get their EDS team to load them with the updated metadata necessary for EDS. This has allowed Proquest database content to be searched at a title-level (unfortunately, not article-level).

Unfortunately, Proquest will not supply MARC records for what we consider their most coveted db: Theses and Dissertations. So, those will never appear in EDS.

If you try this method, and you have a catalog system that requires you to do regular FTP updates, you need to drop your files in the "Update" folder vs. the "full" folder going forward.

We have been investigating alternative discovery tools, and according to OCLC, WMS is content/vendor neutral and will index content from both of these companies, but we need to do a little more research there.

Hope this helps. 

Rebecca

Rebecca Crago Ebersole
Head of Systems and Electronic Resource Management
Sueltenfuss Library | Our Lady of the Lake University
San Antonio, TX 
210-528-6830


------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2018 13:49:37 +0000
From: "Tenglund, Ann" <ATENG at sbu.edu>
To: "eril-l at lists.eril-l.org" <eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>
Subject: [Eril-l] Discovery tools and Ebsco/ProQuest
Message-ID: <82A7800A-A810-416B-99DA-98F717B3A90D at sbu.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Does anyone use a discovery tool that will fully load metadata from both Ebsco and ProQuest and search both of them?

We have great content from both Ebsco and ProQuest and would like our students to be able to find the content from both vendors in one search.  We currently use the Ebsco Discovery Service (EDS), which works well for us, but it cannot load ProQuest metadata, so the only ProQuest resources that show are the links out to full-text if an article was indexed in another covered database but was available in full-text in ProQuest.  Unique ProQuest content does not display in EDS.  As I understand it, the reverse situation is true in ProQuest?s Summon tool (Ebsco content is not searched).

Our EbscoHost Integrated Search (EHIS) tool also does not seem to search ProQuest, even though the integrated search tool performs a search against other databases, rather than storing and indexing metadata from each.

I thought I?d tap the collective wisdom to see what others have that might get around this problem.

Thanks,

Ann

--
Ann M. Tenglund
Director of the Library
Friedsam Memorial Library
St. Bonaventure University
3261 West State Road
St. Bonaventure, NY  14778
716-375-2378
www.sbu.edu/library<http://www.sbu.edu/library>
ateng at sbu.edu<mailto:ateng at sbu.edu>