Serials Solutions Introduces a New and Improved Serials Solutions® 360 MARC Updates Service
Serials Solutions, a business unit of ProQuest Company, today introduced improvements to its 360 MARC Updates OPAC updating service. Enhancements to the service include time-saving features such as trackable brief records and combined records, and support for new formats such as e-books and Unicode UTF-8. By providing customized MARC records for a library’s electronic holdings, the 360 MARC Updates service keeps the OPAC as the authoritative inventory tool for all of the library’s collections.
Serials Solutions 360 MARC Updates service helps patrons quickly find e-resources and access full-text content so that libraries can receive maximum value from both their OPAC and e-resource databases. A key part of the service is automatic provision of an updated MARC record every time there is a change to the description coverage or holdings for the resource. Librarians do not have to locally modify records.
“Now, more than ever, 360 MARC Updates removes the burden from catalogers by saving huge amounts of time and effort,” says Nicole Pelsinsky, Product Manager at Serials Solutions. “It’s an ideal solution for libraries that want to provide a single point-of-access by including e-resource records in their OPAC.”
360 MARC Updates works by supplying a library’s OPAC with collections data from Serials Solutions® KnowledgeWorks, the authoritative knowledgebase for e-resources, e-books, and more. KnowledgeWorks data is derived from the best cataloging sources available - including CONSER MARC records, NLM records, original records created by Serials Solutions catalogers, and numerous other sources. These records are then linked to publisher metadata that is collected, corrected, and normalized by Serials Solutions librarians.
New trackable brief records are processed in the same stream as full MARC records to save time and energy by creating smaller downloads. Full and brief records are now combined into one file to reduce customer downloads by half and eliminate the need to maintain multiple electronic records from multiple sources. These new enhancements also offer better performance—customers may be able to get record updates more than once a month. Existing customers will be contacted with details about how to take advantage of these enhancements.
Serials Solutions 360 MARC Updates also delivers highly customized records unique to each library’s holdings to clearly represent each library’s electronic collection in the OPAC.
About Serials Solutions
Since introducing the first A-to-Z Title List in 2000, Serials Solutions has been a global leader in the library technology marketplace. Founded by a librarian for librarians, Serials Solutions helps library staff and patrons find and use electronic content. Today, with over 2000 clients worldwide, Serials Solutions is the premier vendor of e-resource access and management services (ERAMS), providing a complete and integrated access and management solution for libraries of all sizes and types. The Serials Solutions family of services includes 360 Core, 360 Link, 360 Search, 360 MARC Updates, 360 Resource Manager, and the new 360 Counter e-resource assessment service. The foundation of Serials Solutions technology is Serials Solutions KnowledgeWorks, the authoritative e-resource knowledgebase. Serials Solutions is also the exclusive source for Ulrichsweb.com and Ulrich’s Serials Analysis System. Through its Software as a Service (SaaS) technology model, Serials Solutions provides fast implementation, easy customization, and outstanding value to its client libraries. Serials Solutions is a business unit of ProQuest.
About ProQuest
ProQuest was formed by the merger in 2007 of two leading and historic information technology firms: ProQuest Information and Learning and CSA. The company now provides seamless access to and navigation of more than 125 billion digital pages of the world’s scholarship, delivering it to the desktop and into the workflow of serious researchers in multiple fields, from arts and literature to science, technology, and medicine.
ProQuest’s vast content pools are available to researchers through libraries of all types and include the world’s largest digital newspaper archive, periodical databases comprising the output of more than 9,000 publishers and spanning more than 500 years, the preeminent dissertation collection, and various other scholarly collections. Through the expertise of its business units, Serials Solutions and COS, ProQuest provides technological tools that allow researchers and libraries to better manage and use their information resources. Web: www.csa.com, www.proquest.com