A Discussion Paper for the Cataloging Policy Committee
University of Washington Libraries
By Kathleen Forsythe, Cathy Gerhart, Joe Kiegel, Adam Schiff and Steve Shadle
October 2001
In past meetings, the Cataloging Policy Committee has discussed a number of issues related to the future of the library catalog. The use of links from catalog records to other resources has been a large part of this discussion. Up to now, a number of policies and practices have developed, and other ideas for linking have been suggested, but these practices and ideas have not been reviewed in a systematic manner. This paper attempts to outline a broad range of possibilities and to raise questions for discussion. It is anticipated that wide consultation within the Libraries will be needed before policy decisions are made.
In addition to the public-service and technical issues to be considered, there is also the question of cataloging workload. Some types of linking may be easy to implement within current priorities, while others may not. Additional questions include whether we should mount retrospective projects to add links to older records, and what affect different cataloging workflows have on our ability to implement linking. For example, in Monographic Services quick catalogers will be less able to catch certain types of links than complex copy or original catalogers.
The paper is divided into several sections, proceeding from the “whole” to the “part”:
The library catalog is only one tool we offer that provides access to electronic resources: another important tool is the Digital Registry. This paper does not attempt to develop issues concerning the Registry, or how it relates to the catalog. This discussion is left for another time. Another topic not covered is link maintenance. The issue of link maintenance in the catalog is related to maintenance of links in the larger software environment, including the Registry and a multitude of library Web pages. Some aspects of catalog link maintenance are touched on in the Addendum, but generally we do not address policies or procedures here.
For the purposes of illustration, some of the examples in the paper have been created when there is no current policy or practice to make such links.
There is a current policy that when we purchase a resource intended for users (v. staff use), the resource is reflected in the Libraries’ catalog. The definition of the Libraries “collection” has grown past the acquisition of physical objects to include the acquisition of “access” to electronic information through a licensing agreement (see University of Washington Libraries Principles And Guidelines For Acquiring And Licensing Electronic Information). These policies imply that any online resource where access is provided through a licensing agreement should appear in the Libraries’ catalog. This has generally been the case, although there have been exceptions that should be examined for discussion.
Access to electronic resources is generally provided by the inclusion of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) in the catalog record, which provides direct access to the resource. Resources that require more than a URL for access have not generally been included in the catalog. These include resources that require additional passwords, registration, or some other action (e.g., email, non-anonymous ftp) on the part of the user, or non-Web-based resources (e.g., dial-up). Selection Guidelines for Internet Policies states “The value of the resource must be weighed against the access difficulties presented” so relatively speaking there will not be a large number of these types of resources. A small number of these resources have been included in the catalog. How access is provided is not necessarily through the catalog proper, but by user instructions noted in the catalog record. Examples include:
Title: Beilstein Crossfire (Catalog record)
A database of chemistry compounds that requires the installation of client software. Instead of going to the actual resource, the URL takes you to an intermediate page detailing the installation process.
Title: Radiation and Human Health (Catalog record)
Access to full text is restricted to Government Publication workstations.
Title: Psycoloquy (Catalog record)
An e-mail listserv. The URL is for the home page that provides instructions on how to subscribe.
Resources that have not been included in the catalog
Title: Bloomberg
A resource listed in the Foster Business Library Company Information page (http://www.lib.washington.edu/business/guides/coind/nat-co.html) that provides stock and financial company data. Access is limited to one dedicated phone line. On the website, it is noted that:
o
Access restricted to current
UW students, faculty and staff.
o
Location: Foster Electronic
Reference
Title: Alternative Medicine Alert
Print was discarded in Feb.
2000. The online version has
password-restricted access. The Digital
Registry record is in the database for proxy server authentication. Healthlinks lists it with a note to “Request
at Information for assistance with full-text.”
Title: Early English
Books Online (http://staffweb.lib.washington.edu/cms/trials.htm)
A package of PDF representations
of thousands of early English monographs on a two-month trial period. Password-restricted access.
Discussion Question: What conditions/circumstances/licensing arrangements would make representation in the catalog inappropriate? Should criteria be established beforehand, or should decisions be made on a case-by-case basis?
What is meant by “represented in
the catalog”?
Note that the first three titles presented as examples (Beilstein Crossfire, Radiation and Human Health, Psycoloquy) have different records. The first is a brief bib lacking subject headings, which is sufficient to generate a Digital Registry entry and provides minimal descriptive access in the catalog. The second and third are MARC records (one provided by Marcive and the other a CONSER-authenticated serial record).
Discussion Question: For electronic resources, what level of cataloging is required? Are there conditions/circumstances that warrant less-than-full-level cataloging?
Title: IEEE Xplore (Catalog record)
A fairly typical aggregation in that it consists of thousands of individual items, many of which correspond to items held by the UW Libraries in print. Individual items are added with no timely indication of which ones have been added. Note that purchase of a set of analytic records from OCLC is under consideration.
Discussion Question: Is the aggregate-level catalog record sufficient representation in the Catalog? Should selectors be responsible for determining whether analytics for aggregations are available in machine-readable form, as they are supposed to for major microform collections? Are there aggregations where it is worth creating the analytics ourselves, when they are not available for purchase, or working with other libraries to do them?
When a Web resource is added to the catalog that matches an item owned by the Libraries, per the 1998 CPC decision, this is accomplished as much as possible by adding the URL in an 856 field and a cataloging note to the record for the tangible resource. This is called a single-record approach and supplies a single point of access to both versions (for example, The Normans in South Wales, Catalog record). Links have been made from records for print resources including text, photograph collections, and maps; microforms; and CD-ROMs. In many cases where there are multiple forms of the tangible resource with separate records in the catalog, the URL is added to each record, but this is not a consistent practice. For example the title, Sourcebook of criminal justice statistics has separate records for print and CD-ROM form.
Discussion Question: Should there be a consistent practice of adding a link to the online version to all records for tangible versions?
There are several cases where a separate cataloging record is created for an electronic resource, rather than adding a URL to an existing record. The most common is where a serial tangible resource turns into a database on the Web. Current cataloging rules define constantly updated databases as non-serial (integrating resource), so a new record is added to the catalog.
The single-record approach was not followed for NetLibrary records, which were purchased as a package from OCLC and loaded into the catalog. There was no possible process for machine matching or manipulation of records to accomplish the single-record approach. Due to the large number of titles, it was not feasible for catalogers to manually search and add URLs to records for these titles. For this project, there is one record for the print title (when we own it) and a separate record for the Web version. Search the title 8 practices of exceptional companies as an example. Additional sets of records may be purchased and treated this way in the future.
There are cases where a resource is available in more than one electronic format, for example in PDF (Adobe Acrobat) and HTML. This may occur in a single-record approach or records for just the e-resource (for example, The virtual environment operating system, Catalog record). As much as possible, only one URL is input for these (with the exception of Marcive), due to maintenance considerations (for example, Exploring the influence of a virtual body on spatial awareness, Catalog record). However, where multiple formats are not available from a single Web page, two or more URLs are input for the various electronic formats.
Discussion Question: Should we prefer certain formats over others? Should we provide only one link, or provide multiple links?
Collection level records have been input for all of the image databases available to the public on the content.lib server. Where the image database represents a collection in MSCUA, a single-record approach is used (for example, Asahel Curtis Photo Company collection of photographs of the Pacific Northwest, Catalog record). If the images have been scanned from a number of collections, only represent a small part of an existing collection so that access points differ, or the tangible images are not owned by the Libraries, a separate record is added for the image database. See Cities and Buildings Collection (Catalog record) as an example of a digitized slide collection not owned by the Libraries.
When an e-resource has multiple "volumes" without unique titles, the record may have a single URL or multiple URLs for volumes. Multiple URLs are recorded in cases where there is not a single Web page listing all the volumes, for example Operation plans for anadromous fish production facilities in the Columbia River Basin (Catalog record).
General Discussion Question: Should all types of online versions be linked, or are there cases where this is not desirable? For example, when the electronic resource has a limited time span of usefulness (e.g. annual grant application forms)? How much effort should selectors or catalogers exert in order to discover online versions for the purposes of linking?
Each image in a CONTENT(dm) database has a unique URL. This means that potentially, every image could be individually linked to a record in the catalog. Examples where scanned text images have been linked to print titles in the catalog are volumes in the University of Washington publications in anthropology, which may be found by searching the title American Indians of the Pacific Northwest Digital Collection.
There have also been requests to create separate records for each link on a Web site. This happens most often with sites containing electronic text reproductions, and has been accomplished for some smaller sites. However creating analytics for sites referencing large numbers of texts, such as the Making of America (Catalog record), has not been incorporated into workflows. These pose a similar access issue as microform sets, and purchase of record sets may be a possibility in the future for these sites. For example, a purchase request for analytic records for Documenting the American South has been sent to OCLC.
Discussion Question: Should we ever create analytics for large sets locally, or work with other libraries to do this? What criteria would be used for selecting such sets?
Online monographic series pose a challenge. If the monographic series is cataloged as a serial or a set, there is usually a single URL for the whole site. But in the case where analytic records are to be created for the individual items in the series (cat-as-sep or analyzed), there are questions that need to be resolved.
From the cataloging perspective, sometimes links for the individual volumes do not include a title page presentation (see Physics and chemistry of the earth. Part A, Solid earth and geodesy, Catalog record; and cat-as-sep Recent advances in precise geoid determination methodology, Catalog record), thus the identification of a resource and the creation of a separate record can be problematic.
For many of these, we are already receiving the print version (either through a paid subscription or free of charge). Topics in applied physics (Catalog record) is an example of a cat-as-sep monographic series for which we recently licensed online access.
In cases where the print has ceased and only the online continues, or in cases where the monographic series is only available online, procedures would need to be put into place to monitor these websites for new, individual volumes to be incorporated into the catalog. Usually these sites do not have a current awareness service to alert users to additions.
Discussion Question: Does the cataloging treatment decision for the print become the default treatment decision for the online version? Are the considerations in making a cataloging treatment decision for electronic resources different from tangible resources?
Included in this category are variant editions of a resource available online (including translations and multiple language versions) and updated versions. In general, our policy is to link only to the same resource in electronic form, but there may be times when it is appropriate to link to a different edition of the resource.
General Discussion Question: What, if any, related editions should be linked? What serves users best? What is the most efficient use of catalogers' time? Should catalogers search for related online versions?
Title: A plain and easy account of the British fungi [1871 edition] (Catalog record)
The 1898 edition is available online but we do not own it in print. The catalog record for the 1871 edition links to it.
Title: Flatland (for example, Catalog record)
We have a record for the 1963 reprint of the 5th revised edition of this book from 1944. We also own the 6th edition from 1952, a 1991 reprint of that edition, and a 1992 reprint of the 2nd edition from 1884. The 1884 edition is available electronically from Project Gutenberg and the 1991 reprint of the 1952 edition has been put on the Web by other sources. All the catalog records for the printed editions provide links to all electronic versions.
Title: Chinese views on future warfare [book on microfiche, 1997] (Catalog record for 1997 ed., Catalog record for 1998 ed.)
The 1998 revised edition is available online and a link was made by Marcive from both the record for the revised edition as well as the record for the 1997 edition.
Title: The genus
Collybia (Agaricales) in the northeastern United States and adjacent Canada [a
book] (Catalog
record)
A revised version of this book was published only electronically under a different title. A note was given on the record and a link to the revised edition.
Discussion Question: Should we link related editions? Should we link to all possible electronic editions? Should we provide links from all the tangible editions we own?
Title: Catalogue of the fossil flies of the world (Insecta:Diptera) [book published in 1994] (Catalog record)
There has a continually updated electronic version of this catalog available online, linked from the catalog record for the book.
Title: MARC code list for organizations [a book published in 2000] (Catalog record)
A searchable version that is updated weekly is available online and linked to from the catalog record for the 2000 print edition.
Title: Common names of insects & related organisms, 1997 [a book] (Catalog record)
Updates to this list are available on the publisher's Web site and linked to from the record for the 1997 publication.
Discussion Question: Should we link from a static resource (e.g., a printed directory; a CD-ROM containing census statistics or digital maps) to the electronic version that is continually updated or should we catalog that version on a separate record?
Title: Vascular plants, mosses, and lichens designated at risk in Canada [a Web site] (Catalog record)
The resource is also available in French, at a different address than the English version. The catalog provides links to both.
Discussion Question: Should we link to translations? If so, in all cases, or if not it all cases, then in what circumstances?
Early in the development of our policies for cataloging electronic resources, it was recognized that sometimes only a part of a resource is available in electronic form. The standard note used in the catalog to link to electronic resources, “Connect to this title online,” is misleading to catalog users for links to only partial content or to related materials. Because of this, a list of officially sanctioned “connect to” notes that display in the catalog was developed and continues to be maintained (list). If the standard “Connect to this title online” note is not applicable, catalogers may choose from other notes from three categories: partial contents; other versions or sources of the resource; guides/aids/etc. "Connect to" notes are given in subfield z of 856 fields. It should also be noted that instead of the publicly displayed "connect to" notes that we generally use, there are times when the MARC format calls for the use of a "Materials specified" note, which is given in the subfield 3 of an 856 field.
There are many cases in which a resource itself is not available online, but some portion of the resource has been digitized or made available in electronic form. For serials, there are many instances in which not all the issues of the printed serial are available electronically. Many Web sites for serials provide tables of contents of the issues and/or abstracts of the articles, but no full text. Indexes are available for some titles. All the above are also sometimes available for monographs, as well as prefatory material, forewords, audio files, etc. There are examples in our catalog of links to all these kinds of electronic objects:
Only Some Issues/Parts/Volumes Available
Title: Sourcebook of criminal justice statistics [an annual serial in print and CD-ROM] (Catalog record)
Only the current issue with latest updates is available online. This is noted on the catalog record and a link is provided to the current issue.
Title: Wetlands [a journal] (Catalog record)
The issues from 2000 on are available online via BioOne. Tables of contents, abstracts for some issues, and an index to all the issues are available from the publisher's Web site. Links for both the 2000+ issues and the page from the publisher are provided in the catalog record.
Abstracts/Summaries
Title: The Internet in medicine [a CD-ROM containing conference proceedings] (Catalog record)
Abstracts and texts of some of the papers are also available on the Web site for the conference, which is linked from the record for the CD-ROM.
Title: Proceedings of the 1997 Telescope Mirror Coating and Cleaning Conference [a book] (Catalog record)
Abstracts for the papers available online and linked from the catalog record.
Title: Forestry impacts on freshwater habitat of anadromous salmonids in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska [a government document] (Catalog record)
There is an abstract for this document from the government agency that issued it.
Title: Methodologies and mechanisms for management of cumulative coastal environmental impacts [a document on microfiche] (Catalog record)
Excerpts of this document's executive summary available online.
Partial Text
Title: A distributional checklist of the beetles (Coleoptera) of Florida [a book] (Catalog record)
Only the checklist itself is available online. The rest of the text, including introductory material, bibliography, appendix, and index is only available in the print version.
Title: Washington birds [a serial] (Catalog record)
The table of contents for all the issues is available online, as are some of the actual articles.
Title: Marine biology : function, biodiversity, ecology [textbook] (Catalog record)
The glossary from this text has been put up on the Web with a unique title. This is noted on the catalog record, an added entry is made for the glossary title on the Web, and a link is provided.
Tables of Contents
Tables of contents may come from the publisher of the item or they may be made available by some other agency. The Library of Congress is creating tables of contents Web pages from electronic data sent to them by publishers, and linking to them from their catalog records for the book.
Title: Journal of the Ceramic Society of Japan (Catalog record)
Tables of contents for each issue since Dec. 1995 provided by the publisher.
Title: Forestry in the context of rural development [a book] (Catalog record)
Table of contents, foreword, and abstracts are online at the publisher's Web site.
Title: Reducing school violence through conflict resolution [a book] (Catalog record)
Table of contents of this book provided from the Library of Congress Web site.
Title: Recent and fossil Bryozoa [a book (conference proceedings)] (Catalog record)
Table of contents provided by some other source (International Bryozoology Society via RMIT University in Australia), which happened to be found by a cataloger.
Indexes
Title: Anthony van Dyck as a printmaker [a printed exhibition catalog] (Catalog record )
An index to this book is available as a Microsoft Word file that is downloadable in English, French, or Flemish.
Title: Han'guk yoktae munjip ch`ongso (Catalog record)
This serial is published in Korea. The UW Libraries created a searchable author and title index and linked it from the catalog record.
Title: Digital orthophoto quadrangle [Washington] (Catalog record)
Graphic index showing the library’s holding is available on the Web and linked from the catalog record.
Discussion Question: To which types of partial contents should we link routinely? To which should we not link? How much effort should catalogers make to discover partial online contents for the purposes of linking?
This section focuses on resources in which materials bibliographically related to or accompanying the resource are available online. Materials are assigned to this category when responsibility for them belongs to the creator or publisher of the item and they are specifically designed to be used in conjunction with it.
Title: Inventory methods for wolf and cougar [an electronic text] (Catalog record)
The resource above is a manual available in both HTML and PDF formats. A separate Microsoft Word file containing dataforms that would be used to carry out an inventory is also available online but is not linked from the main document. The catalog record notes the existence of this file and provides a link to it. A different option would have been to catalog the dataforms separately.
Title: Chemical applications of molecular modelling [a book] (Catalog record)
Table of contents, errata, and enhancements to the printed version are available online and linked from the catalog record.
Title: Proceedings of the 1997 ACM/IEE SC97 Conference [a CD-ROM publication] (Catalog record)
Errata to the CD-ROM are available on the Web.
Title: The Jepson manual [a book] (Catalog record)
Corrections to the first two printings of this book are available online.
Title: Opera from Paris [CD-ROM recording of opera broadcasts from 1942-1976] (Catalog record)
Additional information about the performers of each opera and the broadcasts is online and linked from the catalog record.
Title: Worldwide list of systematic entomologists [a searchable Web directory] (Catalog record)
The database is located at one address, but there is a separate description of it for which an additional link is provided in the catalog record.
Title: Participate in Groundhog Job Shadow Day, 1999 [a poster for the event] (Catalog record)
The catalog record contains a link to the Groundhog Job Shadow Day home page.
Title: Organic and biochemistry [a textbook] (Catalog record)
There is a Web site that was developed to serve as a free resource for students and instructors using the textbook and its accompanying CD-ROM. The catalog provides a link to that site.
Title: Foundations of statistical natural language processing [a book] (Catalog record)
There is a companion website for this book. It includes errata, links to other resources on the topics covered in the book, and links to courses at various colleges that use the book.
Title: Issues and innovations in educating faculty on scholarly communication issues [a book (SPEC kit from ARL)] (Catalog record)
Report synopses and links to additional resources are available online and noted in the catalog record.
Title: A midwife's tale : the life of Martha Ballard, based on her diary, 1785-1812 [book] (Catalog record)
There is a Web site that was developed called DoHistory, which is "an experimental, interactive case study based on the research that went into the book and film A Midwife's Tale." The site contains the diary online, table of contents of the book and some of the text, video clips from the film, a digital library of original source material, and other resources about doing history. The catalog record for the book provides a link to this site.
Title: Ibsen in Skien and Grimstad : his education, reading, and early works [a book] (Catalog record)
There is a Web site entitled Resources in Ibsen's early environment. It states that it can be can used independently but also supports the above book. The cataloger considered this related material and provided a link to it.
Title: Trading Asian shares [a book] (Catalog record)
This book is supported by an ancillary Web site containing current news on Asian investments. The site also includes a summary outline of this book and a sample chapter. Both are linked to from the catalog record.
Images of the Item
Title: American homelessness : a reference handbook [a book] (Catalog record)
Catalog record provides a link to an image of the cover from Amazon.com.
Title: Dogs : a startling new understanding of canine origin, behavior, and evolution [a book] (Catalog record)
Catalog record provides a link to an image of the book jacket on the publisher’s website.
Discussion Question: To which types of accompanying electronic materials should we link routinely? Are there any to which we should not link? How much effort should catalogers make to discover accompanying material for the purposes of linking? To which materials do we have the rights to link?
There is a wide variety of "extra" links that can be added to a bibliographic record even though they are bibliographically separate resources. Materials belong to this category when they are the responsibility of persons other than the creator or publisher of the original item, or they originate from the creator or publisher but are not specifically designed to be used in conjunction with the item. Links such as these may already exist in a record that a cataloger finds in OCLC, or a cataloger may add them. Examples of some of these "extras" are:
Movie reviews
Book reviews
General publisher/author websites
Award sites (if the item has won an award)
Summaries or abstracts written by someone other than the author or publisher
Booksellers (Amazon.com, etc.)
Reference sources (biographical resources, encyclopedia entries, etc.)
Currently there are very few guidelines for when to add or delete such links. The main exception is the adding of links to reviews for videos: all media catalogers in Monographic Services routinely add links to an aggregator site for reviews. Below are some examples of these kinds of links in the catalog.
Title: Titanic [videorecording] (Catalog record)
Title: Dogs (Catalog record)
The catalog record for this book has a link to reviews from Amazon.com and from two independent sites that reviewed it that were discovered by doing a Web search.
Title: Russian's world (Catalog record)
Link to reviews of this title on Amazon.com.
Title: Wide open spaces [CD] (Catalog record)
A link is provided on the catalog record for this album to the artists' home page.
Title: The cinematic body [book] (Catalog record)
A link is provided to the author's home page. The author is a faculty member at UW.
Title: Streets v5.0 (Catalog record)
Title: Gladiator (Catalog record)
Links to the Academy Award homepage where the awards this title has won are listed and links to further information about the title and actors.
Title: Secrets and lies (Catalog record)
Links to the Cannes Film Festival Web site where you can link to more information about the winner.
Title: Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone (Catalog record)
Links to the Scholastic Web page which has a summary of the book and other information.
Title: John M. Eccles papers (Catalog record)
Title: Fly [CD] (Catalog record)
The link in this catalog record is to a Yahoo! Music page for this album that contains an image of the CD booklet, lyrics, audio samples of each track, album notes, credits, reviews, biographical information, and other information.
Title: Magnolia [videorecording] (Catalog record)
A link is provided from the catalog to the Internet Movie Database entry for this film.
Title: Antitrust in Germany and Japan (Catalog record)
A link is provided from the catalog to biographical information on the author from Washington University School of Law website.
Title: It takes a village and other lessons children teach us (Catalog record)
A link is provided to the Biography.com entry for Hillary Rodham Clinton. (Note that you cannot easily back out of this source to return to the catalog.)
Discussion Question: Should we routinely add links for any of these categories? How much effort should catalogers make to discover materials for the purposes of linking? Is it appropriate to link from a resource about a body to the home page of that body?
There are several technical means of linking materials to the library catalog, or at least, several variations on a theme. They are important to consider because they may affect the "how" of implementation once we have decided on the "what".
The standard means of linking in a Web catalog is the URL, which is traditionally placed in field 856 of the bibliographic record. Recently, URLs have been added to the MARC format for additional fields: Contents Note (505), Summary Note (520), Additional Physical Form Note (530), Biographical or Historical Note (545), and Cumulative Index/Finding Aids Note (555).
The Innovative catalog also allows a URL to be inserted into *any* field and the link is live in the catalog. While this provides a great deal of flexibility, there are implications that should make us exploit this feature carefully. One consideration is link checking. Although the current link checker is based on the Digital Registry, and does not use catalog records directly, it is realistic to assume that future link checkers in Innovative will do better with URLs in standardized fields than with those placed anywhere in the record. Which is to say that we should think about how URLs will be maintained. The second consideration is future system migration. We don't know what future system we may have or how flexible it will be, but past history shows that standard features are easier to migrate than non-standard features. There are trade-offs between the advantages of creative services we may invent today and the effort it may take to maintain them in the future.
Using staff time to manually insert URLs in records, and to maintain them, is likely to be one of the major means of achieving linking in the catalog. While it is widely applicable to virtually any type of material that we wish to link, the manual approach is relatively slow and expensive. Only so much can be achieved with existing staff, given other priorities and workloads.
A more cost-effective option than manual linking is sometimes available: purchasing sets of records from a vendor.
In some cases, this means loading complete bibliographical records (at full or less-than-full level) with imbedded URLs. An example is the OCLC Electronic Collections service, which offers record sets at the cost of about $1.00 per record. The library is in the process of purchasing Documenting the American South, which will allow us to evaluate how effective this approach is. Early indications are that some extra effort may be required. For example, the Innovative loader must be adjusted for this set in order to insert the proper public note on different types of URLs.
In other cases, we use vendor records and the advanced capabilities of the Innovative loaders to modify existing records. An example is serial records in Lexis-Nexis, where we added checkin records with URLs for our holdings. With proper planning, sets such as this can be maintained by periodically deleting the checkin records and reloading them with updated information.
Thus, when vendor records are available, we may be able to add links to the catalog for large sets that could not be attempted with a manual approach. Of course, there is some overhead for staff time spent on loading, but the amount is low on a per/record basis.
Innovative Interfaces now offers products and services that facilitate linking from the catalog. Specifically, the Millennium Access Plus (MAP) suite includes a product call WebBridge, which provides standardized menus for linking from the catalog to a variety of outside resources. The menus are dynamic, contextual and library-defined, and can be displayed either directly on the WebPAC page or as a separate window. For those of you who are familiar with SFX from Ex Libris, WebBridge is very similar in function.
In conjunction with WebBridge, Innovative offers subscription services to vendors who provide specific resources. For example, Syndetic Solutions has partnered with Innovative to offer a Table of Contents service. Other vendors include Bowker, netLibrary, RealRead and theLibraryPlace. In this approach, we pay on a subscription basis for access to TOCs or other materials, which are linked in as one choice on a WebBridge menu.