I have also had ‘missing’ content from EBSCO CINAHL Complete journals. In this case, the supplement that should exist [had a PubMed PMID] was not listed amongst the issue list for 2011. I took a chance and searched for the article title within the journal……….and found the PDF. Not sure where/what folder it resided within, but not obvious amongst the journal issues on the screen. I told them the situation, and hopefully they will make the ‘supplement’ reappear. Other supplements were listed for the same year, but not the one I was looking for.

 

That only helps if you find a single issue missing, if long stretches of issues were not listed, or worse, links did not work, odds are that EBSCO will have to fix the problem, and it will not be quick if they depend on the publisher for the electronic content.

 

Other small EBSCO CINAHL glitches I have seen were when the list of issues had one issue way out of sequence, such that a quick glance might look like the issue was missing. Another glitch was a regular issue and a supplement issue both having the same designation [ie seeing links for two June issues] except one was the supplement……so you had to check both to find the correct one.

 

All of these I do not send the notification to support, but instead use my database rep at EBSCO. We send them a sizable check each year, and I think it helps that your sales rep [who passes on the glitch to tech support for me] knows the things I discover. No system is perfect, so mistakes will happen………I just want my rep to be aware.

 

A comment on Susan Davis’s comment on missing photos/graphs/illustrations. I have learned the hard way, to take a quick look at any PDF or HTML full text I get from an EBSCO full text journal [or any other full text aggregator………including when the access is from the journal publisher]. When I see ‘figure omitted’ or just the words ‘table 1’…….with no table…………..I do not send that to my patron. Since much of what I deal with is of a clinical/health scenario, I do not want to decide whether that missing content was important [or not] to understanding the content of the rest of the article. Some of the ‘missing’ tables I have discovered were treatment algorithms [once we got the full article from another library for comparison] and depending on the skill of the authors of the article, they may or may not describe it such that the figure is not needed.

 

I have mentioned this to EBSCO tech support, and the response is……..we do not have any listing/etc of what articles and in what journals that occurs. If the figure/illustration was purposefully excluded due to ‘copyright’, someone at EBSCO would have had to intentionally leave out the offending picture/etc. That alone should require some documentation that EBSCO should be tracking for their clients, especially libraries. If the missing content is removed by the publisher, who then passes the PDF/HTML to EBSCO…….I can see where they would not know about it.

 

It can be a pain to have to visually scan thru all the pages of the PDFs/etc [including those I get on ILL], but I think I owe it to the clinicians/nurses I serve to make that quick check.

 

 

Mark McKenney BS, MS, MLS

Medical Librarian – Tue, Thu, Fri – 8AM to 4PM.

[Mon, Wed library is staffed by Linda Ciavonne]

 

Dr E.H. Munro Medical Library

St Mary’s Hospital – the Regional Medical Center

2635 North 7^th Street

Grand Junction, CO 81501-1628

 

970-298-2171    Fax  970-298-7509

library@sclhs.net (accessible by BOTH library staff)

COUSMG  libid         XVY   oclc

 

 

 

 

Hi Sanjeet, this happens more frequently than you would like with “full-text” databases. Patrons discover “missing” content and report it to us. We try to troubleshoot as best we can—is this a knowledgebase error (i.e. incorrect holdings) or is it a problem at the content provider’s end.

 

When we know we have to submit the problem to the content provider, in this case EBSCOHost support, we always tell the patron (or librarian) to go through ILL because the issue will not be resolved in time to meet their needs. In our experience, these issues are not resolved in 24 hours and some may linger for months.  Hence, we automatically push to ILL.

 

I should also mention that EBSCO has a threshold for what they will identify as full text. I cannot recall exactly what the percentage is but it is not 100%.  Therefore the answer you might receive is that the particular article in question will never be available. You have to accept and move on.  Not easy to explain to irate patrons or faculty members, but I suppose that makes large operations run fairly efficiently. And sometimes, there is content within the article, such as a photograph, for which online reproductions rights we never granted. I would be more willing to accept this less than full-text business if only the specific articles impacted were obviously labeled and thus would save both the library and the vendor the staff time to make and respond to problem reports.

 

Good luck Sanjeet!

 

Susan

 

 

Susan Davis

Acquisitions Librarian for Continuing Resources

University at Buffalo (SUNY)

134 Lockwood Library

Buffalo, NY 14260-2210

716-645-2784

716-645-5955 fax

unlsdb@buffalo.edu

http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/staff/index.asp?ID=124

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To unsubscribe from the SERIALST list, click the following link:
http://listserv.nasig.org/scripts/wa-NASIG.exe?SUBED1=SERIALST&A=1

 

To unsubscribe from the SERIALST list, click the following link:
http://listserv.nasig.org/scripts/wa-NASIG.exe?SUBED1=SERIALST&A=1