e-Journals in MetaLib version 4.0

• Article Type: General
• Product: MetaLib
• Product Version: 4

Description:
(This message was posted to the SFX/MetaLib discussion list 20 October 2006)

One of our most important objectives for MetaLib 4.00 – as well as for our other Ex Libris products – is to reduce the total cost of ownership for our customers. This objective is also consistently one of the highest priorities stated by our user community. We included several items in MetaLib 4.00 that contribute to this goal, including providing e-Journal functionality in MetaLib 4.00 directly from SFX. This item was clearly a target for reducing total cost of ownership based on the duplication of effort required to maintain two separate A-Z e-Journal lists – both for our MetaLib and SFX customers, and for Ex Libris from a development and support perspective. Unifying the e-Journal A-Z lists is a step toward unifying the underlying database across our products – another high priority item requested by our user community.

Resolution:
MetaLib 4.00 and e-Journals

Effective with MetaLib 4.00, e-Journal records will no longer be exported from SFX and imported to MetaLib. Rather, each MetaLib institution will specify a link to the SFX A-Z list that they wish to display in MetaLib. The SFX A-Z list will be displayed in a separate window that opens when a user selects the ‘Find e-Journals’ link in MetaLib. Users remain on the same page in MetaLib that they were on when selecting the ‘Find e-Journals’ link.

The current functionality offered by the SFX A-Z e-Journals list surpasses that provided in the existing MetaLib e-Journals module. We intend to continue assessing and implementing future developments to ensure the SFX A-Z list is superior to previous offerings in either product. For example, in SFX 3 we invested in adding categorization options for e-Journals.

At the request of the SFX user community, we continue to fine-tune and enhance the SFX categories and sub-categories currently used in the SFX KnowledgeBase. We also continue to investigate whether it would benefit our customers if the existing SFX categories were augmented with additional entries, possibly utilizing other data sources. SFX’s A-Z list includes functionality for locating e-Journals by SFX category that will now be readily available to MetaLib 4.00 users.

We will retain MetaLib’s ‘My e-Journals’ personalization feature in version 4.00, but the mechanism behind the feature will change. SFX is developing a new service to ‘push to My e-Journals’ that customers can include in their SFX menu. This service will be available by the time MetaLib 4.00 is released. This new service enables users to add favorite e-Journals to their MetaLib ‘My e-Journals’ list from any SFX list of e-Journals when presented with this SFX menu service, rather than only from the MetaLib Find e-Journals module.

We will provide an option to existing MetaLib 3.13 customers that allows them to convert any existing ‘My e-Journals’ lists for their users from v3.13 to v4.00. This optional conversion will be part of our new MetaLib Upgrade Express Kit that will enable customers to run their MetaLib v4.00 upgrades themselves.

In MetaLib 4.00, ‘My e-Journals’ are still part of MetaLib’s ‘My Space’ personalization module, and users will still be able to link directly to the e-Journal via SFX. Descriptive information about an e-Journal included in a user’s ‘My e-Journals’ list will be provided via a direct link to the full e-Journal record in SFX. There will no longer be an ‘information’ button in the MetaLib ‘My e-Journals’ list display. Each e-Journal displayed in a user’s ‘My e-Journal’ list will include the e-Journal title that links to the full SFX record, ISSN, SFX button that links to the SFX menu, and a ‘delete’ button to remove the e-Journal from their personal e-Journal list. We are also investigating whether we can develop a new SFX service that would enable direct retrieval of availability information from SFX via the SFX buttons displayed in MetaLib’s ‘My e-Journal’ list. The e-Journal availability information would then be displayed in the SFX menu when this option was selected by the user.