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Missing ebrary titles
The Office of Library Services has recently seen an uptick in reported problems with ebrary titles showing up in the CUNY Catalog and not showing up in OneSearch. We have been in communication with the vendors (ebrary and Ex Libris) and think we have identified the problem.
In a nutshell, for subscribing to ebrary Academic Complete, we were given access to two complimentary collections: College Complete and Public Library Complete. These titles appeared in the ebrary platform but were never activated in the Primo Central Index (PCI) or SFX for discovery in OneSearch. We activated the collections in both places last week (on 2/15/17) and that seemed to have resolved most of the reported access problems—but not all of them. There are still some titles not showing up in OneSearch.
In talking to the ebrary vendor, we found that there are fewer titles in the SFX targets than there are in the collections: College Complete is short 1200 titles and Public Library Complete is short 1900 titles. They think that there was some problem with a metadata file sent to SFX and they are trying to resolve this issue. They have assured us this is a priority (as this would affect all College Complete and Public Library Complete subscribers who use SFX as their link resolver, not just CUNY). Once this is resolved, all centrally-licensed ebrary titles will appear in the OneSearch platform.
In the meantime, we may also be missing MARC records for these complimentary collections. We’ve been receiving monthly additions to these collections but they have been in the batches with the Academic Complete records and, again, we believe the numbers of records do not match up with the numbers in the SFX targets. We will work with the vendor on this as well; however, we think this will take more time and, in the meantime, are making the discoverability of these titles in OneSearch a priority.
If you have any questions about this topic, please contact your ERAC and/or SFX Committee representative. (The latter will be discussing this issue at its next meeting on Thursday, March 9, 2017.)
OneSearch, E-Resources, and Dedup
Over the winter break, OLS applied a major improvement to OneSearch results: we “de-deduped” many e-resource records!
The Problem
As OneSearch was initially configured, it applied its dedup process to all records equally, whether they were print or electronic.
What is dedup? The dedup process allows OneSearch to present a single result when the identical resource is held by multiple schools. Multiple records are merged into one display record. This is useful in the case of print resources, allowing the system to offer all CUNY locations to the user in one result.
However, this proved a major problem for e-resource records as the merged data includes the MARC 856 fields (which often provide links to electronic resources). OneSearch uses these fields to create a “View Online” button which links to full-text whenever the underlying metadata indicates this is the purpose of the field (see Why Does OneSearch Say We Have the Electronic Book?).
Deduped e-resource records with multiple 856 fields included in the merged records made it difficult for OneSearch to determine the correct availability for many deduped records. This resulted in the dreaded Full text may be available, see “Details” for links availability message with its accompanying grey dot and lack of a “View Online” button:
The Solution
E-resource records whose links require proxying are being prevented from matching other records for the purpose of deduping. This allows each local view to accurately identify the availability status of its e-resource:
The solution was only applied to records which require proxying on the assumption that e-resources that do not require proxying are freely available to everyone and should be shared with everyone.
The Caveat
Please note that this solution works best in the local school views. A version of the problem still exists for many records in the CUNY view. Instead of a single, deduped record, the CUNY view now displays a group of records (as they are now FRBRized instead of deduped):
Clicking on the title will take the user to a list of individual e-resource records. Records which are only available via a local library will still show the Full text may be available message in the CUNY view.
If you run across any problems, please be sure to report them to OLS by opening a work order with the CUNY Service Desk.
Primo: Palgrave Connect
The CUNY-wide licensed ebook titles of the Palgrave Connect collection are now active in SFX and can be discovered in Primo.
In SFX, 6,491 portfolios are active for all of CUNY in the PALGRAVE_CONNECT_EBOOKS_COMPLETE target.
