Last week’s post about link checking describes one of the ways that OLS is working on improving access to e-resources via OneSearch.

Another area of work regards e-resource records batchloaded to Aleph which are also available via the Primo Central Index (PCI). Because of the large number of duplicate records coming from Aleph, there are often problems determining availability correctly for these batchloaded records.

To avoid these problem, when OLS finds that PCI records are duplicated in Aleph, we mark the Aleph records in order to prevent transfer of these records to OneSearch.

Note: OLS is not removing records from Aleph, we are simply not using those records in OneSearch.

Additional benefits of this approach:

• Efficiency. Duplication doesn’t only happen with PCI. Sometimes the same records are loaded to Aleph for multiple libraries. Any library using OneSearch as their discovery tool can choose to stop running these duplicate batchloads.
• Faster turnaround with updates coming to PCI directly from the publisher.
• Reduced potential for error and out-dated content.

How do I know which Aleph records are being blocked?

STA = PCI means we don’t need this record in OneSearch. These records can be found in Aleph via a CCL search (where “xx” is your library code):

wst=pci and wow=xx

What if there is more metadata in the Aleph record than in the PCI record?

Many PCI records come with searchable full-text — for example, in addition to the metadata, the entire text of an article could be searchable. Although it is possible that PCI records will contain less metadata than Aleph records, in such cases, we believe that the searchable full-text is a more than ample substitute. On the OLS Support Site, the following information is available:

• PCI collection descriptions including collection name, vendor, content, coverage, if full-text is searchable
• Each library’s PCI collection activations

How do we know if specific e-resources are available in PCI in order to decide what content is duplicated?

PCI makes activated collections searchable (aka “discoverable”). Full-text access for CUNY (aka “Full text Available” in OneSearch) happens because the resource is also activated in SFX. Many PCI collections can be searched for free, even when delivery of full-text is only available to subscribers. See the Primo, PCI, and SFX blog post for more information on this relationship.

At CUNY, we have activated all free-to-search PCI collections in our testing (“Sandbox”) version of OneSearch. When we want to check if specific e-resources are available via PCI, we can search for them in the Sandbox and, after the initial search result is displayed, we click on the “Include results without full text online” checkbox to include content to which we do not have full-text access.

Aleph e-resource records that are not found in PCI will continue to be sent to OneSearch.

Sandbox Caveat: The Sandbox does not include all CUNY content. It is restricted to 100K (local) records so it only contains a small percentage of our Aleph content.

Why does OneSearch sometimes say “No full-text” when there is a working link to full-text in the “Details” tab?

Distinguishing what is really available as full-text is challenging. To minimize user frustration, it is considered preferable to under-promise and over-deliver rather than to over-promise and under-deliver. In other words, the system errs on the side of false negatives (“No full-text” displayed even though full text is available), instead of false positives (“Full text available” displayed even though full text is not available).

For this reason, it can be helpful to remember that while “Full text available” is generally reliable, “No full-text” is less reliable. It is usually worthwhile to click on the “Details” tab of a “No full-text” result, just in case it contains some link that will get you to full-text.

Example: HathiTrust provides no indication of whether its content is open access or not, forcing its users to choose between false negatives and false positives. In response, we at CUNY have chosen to indicate that all HathiTrust content is “No full-text” even though many records will contain a link to full-text in the “Details” tab.

Are e-books showing up in Google Scholar? Many faculty will go to Google Scholar as their discovery tool and bypass the library.

E-resources activated in SFX show as available at CUNY in Google Scholar. This means that a side effect of this project is more availability information being shared with Google Scholar, inadvertently leading to a better user experience in Google Scholar. Please be aware, however, that Google Scholar shares little about how and where it gets the information it provides.

What are e-resources?

“E-resources” refers to any type of content that is available in electronic or digital form. This includes articles, books, videos, and more.