The new platform does allow one to link to the title directly, without the need to create the e-book subcollections that were so tedious to maintain.  That is an improvement.  The downside is that the direct series URL has a search box at the top of the screen that searches all of GVRL.  If a patron wants to search just the series, they have to notice the smaller search box further down the page.  I think this will lead to some patron confusion.

 

 

From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU] On Behalf Of Judith Nagata
Sent: Friday, January 06, 2012 2:05 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Re: [SERIALST] URLs for Gale series??

 

We have canceled our Gale Virtual Reference Library subscription to the International Directory of Company Histories mostly due to low usage. However, the access issue noted here was another major drawback. And, we also struggled with the vendor on billing issues.  I am reluctant to look at any other GVRL series until some of this gets resolved.

 

 

 

Judith M. Nagata

Serials/Electronic Resources Librarian

Harrisburg Area Community College

Library Central Services

One HACC Dr.

Harrisburg, PA 17110

 

Ph: 717-221-1300, x 1624

 



>>> "Pennington, Buddy D." <penningtonb@UMKC.EDU> 12/12/2011 6:29 PM >>>

Hi all,

 

I am wondering if anyone has gotten any reasonable answers from Gale as to why they cannot provide title-level URLs for their online series. For example, we have Business Plans Handbook volumes 1-17. And we have 17 separate URLs for this title.

 

Currently, we are using one bibliographic record with a separate 856 field for each volume. This does not scale forward, as you can imagine. We could use Serials Solutions, but they also treat each volume as a separate book record. So we would end up with 17 separate bib records in this case. This is also a problem unless a library decides to limit access to just the current few volumes.

 

Or I suppose we could link to just the GVRL interface. What are other libraries doing?

 

Seems like treating these as serials would be much easier in terms of user access. Has anyone heard whether Gale is planning on doing anything about this?

 

Buddy Pennington

Director of Collections and Access Management

University of Missouri - Kansas City

304 Miller Nichols Library

800 East 51st Street

Kansas City, MO  64110

816-235-1548

816-333-5584 (fax)

 

UMKC Libraries: Discovery. Knowledge. Empowerment.