Why Assumption College Chose SerialsSolutions

Presented at the NELINET Annual Meeting, May 10, 2002
By Carol Maksian, Head of Reference & Instructional Services, Emmanuel d'Alzon Library
cmaksian at assumption.edu

Issues Precipitating Purchase

• Our online services were growing and offering more full text options.
• Students were becoming more savvy about using online resources and began asking for articles online if possible.
• E-Journals were gradually being incorporated into the catalog, but it was impossible to include the thousands of titles from the aggregator databases.
• The Interlibrary Loan Department would get requests from faculty and students for materials that could be accessed online.
• Librarians needed to search in several different databases to determine if Assumption had access to a particular journal online.
• Patrons both in house and off campus would feel they asked a simple question, "Do you have a journal?" and waited while the librarians took over 15 minutes to give an answer.

Assumption College Reference Librarians
"WE NEED A MASTER LISTING OF ALL OF OUR FULL TEXT JOURNALS!"
Spring 2000

The Solution Evolves

• Our Catalog/ Reference Librarian began creating a Microsoft Access database of all of our full text titles by compiling title lists from vendors. The process took a couple of months because vendors provided title and coverage information in different formats and some lists required extensive editing in order to make them uniform for our master list.
• As more online services were added, it was increasingly difficult to maintain the database because titles were deleted, added and coverage dates changed. By the time it was updated, it was out of date.
• The full text journal database was an instant success but it was only available at the Reference desk or in the Reference office.

Next, we wanted to make it accessible via the web for the entire Assumption community.

• We read articles in library journals such as Computers in Libraries about how it was possible to make a Microsoft Access database searchable via the web.
• We shared our findings and ideas with Assumption College's Computer Services, but it was not considered a high priority and therefore we could not make our huge database web accessible.

Our Goal Is Reached!!!

We attended workshops and presentations to see what other libraries were doing. In January 2001, we attended a workshop where various speakers discussed their solutions to locating journals online. New York Public Library librarians discussed their recent purchase of Serials Solutions to manage their full text offerings. The product did exactly what we wanted; the vendor maintained the database on a regular basis, provided a web ready version and it sounded affordable.

Implementation

• In July 2001, we sent our list of online services that contained full text journals to SerialsSolutions.
• By late August, they e-mailed a zip file of the database in html format.
• In less than hour we unzipped the file, uploaded it to the web and we were up and running.
• In October we began promoting it to our patrons and in library classes.

Support

• Initial installation required a couple of phone calls.
• Problems have been resolved very quickly. (We had given the wrong URL for one of the vendors and they corrected the problem and sent a new file back to us in a couple of days.)
• Updates have been very timely.
• A Client Center website was recently created for local administrators to maintain their current services. Changes must be input by the 20th of each month.

Future

• We hope to customize our web pages and create a keyword search. Currently we just have an out of the box version.
• We need to do more promotion... we have publicized the service in our newsletter, in classes and in the library but still many Assumption library users are not aware of the service.

Overall, SerialsSolutions has been a timesaver and increased access to our many full text resources both on and off campus 24/7.    We love it!

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