Question about eBook records importing to Sirsi/Summon
by Loren Mindell 3 years agoHoldings in ProQuest eBook Central provided by the consortium show up in Summon search results. How do the holdings records get from eBook Central into Summon?
RCC is looking to expand our eBook collection in eBook Central. ProQuest will send us MARC records, so we can add those via Workflows and they will be batch loaded into Summon.
The question is; do we have too? Would the same mechanism that keeps track of what we have access to through the consortium capture holdings purchased on our own? If we were to ever lose access to a title, would we need to delete those holdings ourselves or is there some automated process that cleans things up for us?
I am guessing that we will have to do the upkeep on eBook titles the same way we do for our physical collection but still curious.
Regards,
Loren Mindell
Richmond Community College
Hi, Loren,
The cataloging subcommittee has just hammered out a new ebook policy that is going before the Steering Committee's April meeting, and it addresses topics exactly like this.
If the eBook is linked through Summon, you don't want to add a separate record for the eBook in WorkFlows, because what we've found is that will cause BOTH records (the Summon record and the WorkFlows record) to show up as separate records in Summon and create a lot of confusion for everyone. So the general rule is that if the eBooks are indexed and linked through Summon, you do NOT add a separate catalog record to WorkFlows.
For example, we recently acquired several titles through the R2 Library (similar to eBook Central) for our nursing students. We had Summon link to our R2 Library holdings, and now those eBooks show up in Summon, but we did not add separate bibliographic records for them in WorkFlows.
As for your next question, you are right: each library is responsible for their own eBook holdings.
If you still have questions, please don't hesitate to let me know.
Thank you very much Teresa! That does clear up some things for me. We do not want to create duplicate records. :)
In this case, however, we are adding books to a collection that is already linked to Summon and need to make sure that the new titles are linked as well. The original collection we have access to through NCLive but new titles purchased by the college may not be indexed in the same manner.
I still need to figure out a best practice for ensuring new titles added to eBook Central show up in search results.
Loren,
Richmond CC isn't the only college having issues with Summon right now. I suggest you contact our ILS administrator, Drew McNaughton, at sirsi_help@nccommunitycolleges.edu. Go over your problem with him first, just to be sure, but it sounds like the problem is a Ex Libris' end, not ours. In the end Drew may advise you to notify your Ex Libris/Summon contact about all this.
A lot of people don't realize that the free version of Summon that is provided via NC LIVE is NOT the current version of Summon. It is an older version. Our technology and programs are being updated constantly, so it's a safe bet that the free version of Summon will become outdated, and approach EOL (end-of-life). Colleges using the free version will left high and dry when that happens unless Ex Libris offers NC LIVE an updated version.
If you don't know who the Ex Libris/Summon contact is, then you may need to contact someone at NC LIVE for that information. Hope this information helps.
Colleen
Got it. Thanks for the advice! I do have a contact at ExLibris and will forllow up with them and include Drew in the conversation.
As an addendum to Colleen's reply, Loren, I would suggest that your library have a single contact person designated for Summon issues. Otherwise, I don't have much to add to Colleen's reply.