• Collections & Technical Services
• July-August 2006
• Issue: 204

OCLC Announces the ESerials Holdings Service

The OCLC eSerials Holding service will launch in Summer 2006. The new service is an efficient, cost-effective way to make your electronic content more visible and accessible. Working in partnership with serials management providers, including EBSCO, Ex Libris (coming later in 2006), Serials Solutions and TDNet, OCLC automatically sets and maintains electronic serials holdings information at the journal title level against existing eSerials MARC records in WorldCat. You control the receipt of ILL requests for these resources by setting a policy to deflect all eSerials requests to the next library in the lender string, deflect all but requests from libraries in your existing OCLC groups, or accept all requests for review.

OCLC is offering the new service to member libraries at no charge.

The OCLC eSerials Holdings service:

• Increases usage of your electronic serials collection by making it more visible to searchers and ILL librarians.
• Cost-effectively keeps your electronic serials holdings up-to-date in WorldCat without adding to your cataloging workload.
• Increases the value of your investment in A-Z lists, OpenURL resolver and WorldCat.
• Enables you to automatically control and/or deflect ILL requests from colleagues in the OCLC cooperative.
• Helps bridge the gap between print and electronic materials.
• Enhances resource sharing efficiency as librarians discover their eSerials collection in WorldCat Resource Sharing, enabling them to fill internal requests from their own collection.

The initial release will focus on the holdings component, accepting holdings directly from libraries or from partners on the library's behalf. OCLC will set holdings on eSerials MARC records in WorldCat, and keeping them up to date monthly.

The eSerials Holdings Service and Local Holdings Records in WorldCat: The Service does NOT, at this time, create Local Holdings Records in WorldCat. The holdings are set at the journal title level. Creating detail holdings (MFHD level 4) will be added as an option in a future version of the service.

For additional information and a “FAQ” visit: http://www.oclc.org/eserialsholdings/, or contact Nylink at 518-443-5444/800-342-3353

[OCLC - edited]