[Eril-l] link checking best practices

[Kat Hart]

We have had the upheaval of both a consolidation with another institution and a statewide migration from Voyager to Alma in the past two years, but before this, I had my unit do a comprehensive access checking project in 2015 - 2016. This did not include aggregators, as that would be over 500K links to check, and time was precious. I limited the project to non-aggregators, making the project just under 9K links.

I exported a spreadsheet of all our active non-aggregator links from our link resolver, divided it equally between me and my staff, and gave everyone a year to get through their part of the list. Staff were required to examine all interfaces for data about the order before checking access: ILS orders (payments and notes), vendor subscription management site orders, ERMS, link resolver, and finally check access on the publisher's site. They posted what access they found into our ERMS and tracked their progress on the spreadsheet. After this work was completed, I evaluated the results. I decided the best course of action was to gather all the problem titles and assign semiannual access checking on these links. That list was divided up equally among the unit, myself included. We only got through the first round of "problem" title checking when I had to put the project on hold and divert everyone to consolidation and then Alma migration.

I did create procedures, and I am happy to share, but they contain institution specific instructions, so I would need to clean them up for public consumption. Let me know if anyone is interested in these. Also, they are Voyager, EBSCOnet, EBSCO ERM Essentials, and SFX centric. I will need to update our procedures for Alma after we clean up all our migrated data and resume the access checking project. Also, I require my staff to access check links when they land on a record for any other purpose as part of routine maintenance. This way, some access checking is done on a regular basis. You never know when you are going to look at any given record, so check the access while you are dealing with the problem/issue that brought you the record.

I hope this is useful information.

Regards,
Kat

Katherine Hart, MLIS
Electronic and Continuing Resources Librarian
Georgia State University Library
100 Decatur Street, SE
Atlanta, GA 30303
404-413-2796
khart at gsu.edu



From: Eril-l [mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org] On Behalf Of Theresa Borchert
Sent: Friday, June 15, 2018 10:13 AM
To: Beth M. Johns <bmjohns at SVSU.edu>; ERIL-L <eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>
Subject: Re: [Eril-l] link checking best practices

I would be interested in how others are doing journal link checking using WMS.

We currently do journal link checking for individual subscribed content to the article level. Our serials coordinator and/or student worker spot check our eholdings from the first date we should have access to the present (or the latest date we should have access). They work on this using a computer that emulates off-campus access.

We generally do this once a year about April (after our big vendor order has been completed and subscriptions have started for the new year's content cycle).

Notes:

  *   Sometimes with WMS the publisher link is not the first link in WorldCat Discovery.
  *   Students need to know the difference between direct publisher access and leased platform access.
  *   Clicking down to the article level will create a usage statistics.
  *   Using the computer that emulates off-campus (proxy) access does not guarantee that this will work from off-campus. So, checking the URL at the article level for the 'proxy chuck' is important. If it is missing we need to check this again from off-campus.
  *   We currently generate a list of owned content titles from publishers with date ranges and publisher platforms from our ERM which is separate from WMS. I would like to be able to do this using WMS.
WMS wish list.

  *   Ability to generate a list from WMS of owned journal content to a spreadsheet. This would allow people doing the checking to pass on the the next student titles already checked and ultimately to the person who can fix the problems. Currently you would have to go to each collection with owned content and download a KBART file. You would still have to know which collections you have turned on and which collections include the titles you need to check.
  *   Ability to download the list of owned collection from Collection Manager. For example: When I do a * search for owned Collections in Collection Manager I would like to download content listed from the results. Each year I create a new sheet in  spreadsheet with this information so I can check changes in content over time, correct duplicate collections, cross-check yearly content changes and compare statistics. It's interesting to see how much leased aggregate content changes each year. How we have increased in Open Access content, etc... And has allowed me to check if multiple collections are turned on for the same publisher.
Theresa Borchert, Electronic Resources Librarian
Concordia College
Moorhead, MN


________________________________
From: Eril-l [eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org] on behalf of Beth M. Johns [bmjohns at SVSU.edu]
Sent: Friday, June 15, 2018 7:24 AM
To: ERIL-L
Subject: [Eril-l] link checking best practices

Hello,



I am developing procedures for link checking e-journals, both individually subscribed titles and links within aggregators. We would like to have our student workers do this for us on a regular basis.



If you do link checking of your e-journals, how often do the student workers / staff do this?



Do any of you have guidelines / best practices that you can share?



Thank you.



Beth





Beth M. Johns, MLIS

E-Resources Librarian

Saginaw Valley State University

Melvin J. Zahnow Library
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