1. Sherab Chen Ohio State University Libraries
Sherab Chen is the E-Resources Metadata and Discovery Librarian in the Ohio State University Libraries’ Content Description and Access Department, and a faculty in OSU's East Asian Studies Center with areas of expertise in Tibetan Buddhist Studies and Classical Tibetan. Previously he was the Coordinator for Non-Roman Cataloging from He obtained his MLS from University of Wisconsin-Madison with a double major in Tibetan Buddhist Studies.
Impact of Loading Vendor E-Books Records on the Library Catalog Initiatives to Improve Discovery
Sherab Chen
Ohio State University Libraries

2. introduction
The Ohio State University Libraries, like many other academic libraries, acquires e-books through different models, from individual title purchase, package purchase to DDA and consortium.
As e-book providers frequently provide MARC data for the purchased e-books, batch loading of these third party MARC records has become a major form of e-book cataloging.
The E-Resources Section in Collection Description and Access Department, Ohio State University Libraries has one librarian, one A&P and two full time support staff members – so surprisingly, a small team!
The Ohio State University Libraries, like many other academic libraries, acquires e-books through different models, from individual title purchase, package purchase to DDA and consortium.
As e-book providers frequently provide MARC data for the purchased e-books, batch loading of these third party MARC records has become a major form of e-book cataloging.

3. Locally generated e-book records
E-books cataloging
Ebrary DDA triggered titles
ETD ingestion and cataloging
Free e-resources in the form of e-book
We still maintain a steady flow of on-spot cataloging for e-books
being purchased individually
or as a package (such as recent purchases of American Society of Civil Engineers, GALE Archive database Unbound collection, and Cornerstone Pharmaceutical Sciences collection).
As for the Demand Driven Acquisition, we first load the Ebrary DDA records to the catalog (as un-cataloged records) and waiting for the titles to be “triggered” on Ebrary site, and then on a monthly base, we complete the catalog process for each triggered (i.e. purchased) e-books.
In addition to regular e-books, we also catalog OSU locally digitized materials and one as a signature product is the OSU new born digital theses and dissertations, as well as historical theses and dissertations. We recently completed a batch loading of 25,000 OSU historical Ph.D. dissertations to OhioLINK ETD Center, via the newly developed OhioLINK ETD Batch Loading platform, with full metadata and pdf full text access. Complete cataloging for all these titles on WorldCat is also accomplished at the same time. On a regular base, we also fulfill the requests from Collection and Subject librarians to provide cataloging records for public free e-resources they identified and a small portion of those are in the form of e-books as well.

4. Sources of vendor records
Directly from or downloaded/FTP from vendors website
Ebrary DDA
Consortium (OhioLINK) delivered e-book collections records
E-book records delivered via OCLC WorldShare Collection Manager
Sources of vendor (including consortium) MARC records include packages directly from vendor or downloaded/FTP-ed from vendor sites, Ebrary DDA (an incoming major platform change in the end of May), OhioLINK consortium e-book collections records, and e-books records delivered on OCLC WorldShare Collection Manager. Currently we have fewer e-book collections delivered via Collection Manager in comparison with records directly obtained from vendors, though the number of titles may be large, such as the selected ScienceDirect e-books and ACS Symposiums. In rare cases we have to go through some special order process to obtain MARC records, such as dealing with the platform change of Madici.tv.

5. Challenges in using vendor records
Availability
Change, cancellation, and more
Meeting the cataloging standards
Holdings or no holdings on OCLC WorldCat*
Catalog efficiency (multiple records vs. overlays for the same title)
Discovery*
Availability:
Though most vendors have catalog records ready around the time of acquisition, the way of getting the records varies.
Sometimes there is time lap for MARC record availability after we have already paid for access
What being purchased and what MARC records being provided are two things. Sometimes, even the ACQ librarian is not clear what package of MARC records to use, and the E-resources Metadata librarian become fully responsible in identifying the appropriate records.
Change, cancellation and more:
Merging records occurring on WorldCat – need to figure out a way to identify same but merged records by oclc# in 019 field
Holdings or no holdings on WorldCat?
This has become a major concern and will be specifically addressed in the following slides
Catalog efficiency - multiple records vs. overlays for the same title:
Some time the cataloging Multiple records for the same title as a result of batch loading purchased vendor e-book records that have overlapping titles.

6. Trouble shooting mechanism
JIRA tickets
Review file on Sierra
Shared documentation to track progress and problem solving
ILL requests

7. The ill request cancellations
From 1/31/2014 to 11/22/2016, we received a total of 32,041 loan requests from OSU users for physical items (does not include article/chapter copy/scan requests)
We cancelled 12,982 for a variety of reasons
Among them, 795 were cancelled because we could get the title online in a form such as e-book
From 1/31/2014 to 11/22/2016, we received a total of 32,041 loan requests from OSU users for physical items (does not include article/chapter copy/scan requests). We cancelled 12,982 for a variety of reasons, the most common being that we could not find a library with a circulating copy (n=3,314).

8. The ill request cancellations
Breakdown of reasons for cancellation:
we could not find a library with a circulating copy (n=3,314),
the title was available in OhioLINK and should be requested through the Central Catalog (n=2,443)
the title is already available on shelf at OSU (n=1,200)
And that we can get it online in a form such as e-book (n=795)
Other reasons (the ILL head didn’t supply)
===
795 requests total were cancelled (a little over 5 requests per week) because the requested loan title was available online
435 were cancelled because OSU has the ebook and there was a record in our local catalog for it
93 were because the title was available through Internet Archive
54 were because the title was available through Google Books
53 were because the title was available through Hathi
9 were because the title was in the OhioLINK ETD
151 were other assorted institutional repositories, archives, or government sites online

9. Why the e-book record is not discovered?
From 1/31/2014 to 11/22/2016, we received a total of 32,041 loan requests from OSU users for physical items (does not include article/chapter copy/scan requests). We cancelled 12,982 for a variety of reasons, with the most common being that
we could not find a library with a circulating copy (n=3,314),
the title was available in OhioLINK and should be requested through the Central Catalog (n=2,443)
the title is already available on shelf at OSU (n=1,200)
And that we can get it online in a form such as e-book (n=795)
Other reasons (the ILL head didn’t supply)
===
795 requests total were cancelled (a little over 5 requests per week) because the requested loan title was available online
435 were cancelled because OSU has the ebook and there was a record in our local catalog for it
93 were because the title was available through Internet Archive
54 were because the title was available through Google Books
53 were because the title was available through Hathi
9 were because the title was in the OhioLINK ETD
151 were other assorted institutional repositories, archives, or government sites online

10. Why the e-book record is not discovered?
OSU holdings are not set on OCLC WorldCat
Most vendor provided MARC records do not even have OCLC numbers
Mechanism of the library discovery layer
Library catalog is not presented on the top search layer
Library catalog records have not been advocated
The possible reasons for why the e-book record is not discovered?
OSU holdings are not set on OCLC WorldCat - most vendor provided MARC records do not have OCLC number and holdings are not set on WorldCat
The mechanism of the library discovery layer direct user’s first search action to the WorldCat Discovery (or WorldCat Local) – you have to dig down to one more layer to trigger search on the library’s catalog.
One thing I learned on this conference from presenters addressing library e-resources workflows is that many libraries advertise the e-resources collections they added for users. I’m not aware of any public announcement of new e-book collections other than in subject librarian’s lib guide or other places. As the e-resources cataloging unit is the final chain of providing e-book access and discovery – we should do something!

11. Holdings or no holdings?
We have experimented with the Connexion’s Batch Update Holdings functionality to set OSU holdings for e-book titles as long as the vendor records have OCLC numbers.
We need to explore other possibilities for making batch loaded vendor e-books records more discoverable (OCLC Query Collection, OCLC Central Index in addition to WorldShare Collection Manager)
We have experimented with the Connexion’s Batch Update Holdings functionality to set OSU holdings for e-book titles as long as the vendor records have OCLC numbers.
We need to explore other possibilities for making batch loaded vendor e-books records more discoverable – including OCLC Query Collection and examine the OCLC Central Index in addition to use WorldShare Collection Manager.

12. advocate the use of library catalog
Suggest faculty members to use our e-book catalog record on their syllabus
Contribute to the library’s development of content discovery projects
Another simple but often neglected option is to (re)advocate the use of library catalog

13. Access - discovery
We have been making effort on providing access through all models of e-resources to our patrons, from acquisition to cataloging and system support.
The question now is how can we, as technical services librarians, contribute to the improvement of discovery to the content we are providing and maintaining access to?

14. initiatives
A project that will allow users to gain access to open resources bypassing the layer of web authorization
Build a new mechanism in creating and ingesting metadata for digitized OSU theses and dissertations
Coordinate the processing of e-resources with multiple creators (agencies such as OhioLINK and CIC) in order to reduce the number of duplicate e-book records
Here're some initiatives related to the enhancement in e-books discovery, some are being processed and some already in process, tied with the library’s development of strategic plans:
In response to Affordability and open educational resources, we making a project that will allow users to gain access to open resources without going through a layer of authentication – We are reinventing the use of field 945 "openkb“ a code that tells the system by pass the web authorization services when user click on the URL in the records on or off-campus.
Another initiative is to coordinate the processing of e-resources with multiple creators (agencies such as OhioLINK and CIC) in order to reduce the number of duplicate e-book records.
We are building a new mechanism in providing full text access to OSU dissertations and theses - batch loading model on OhioLINK ETD Center. This replaces the original way of individual submission on ETD, waiting for Gradschool’s approval and then complete the cataloging process. Instead, we will ingest the ETD metadata (50 or more at a time), and complete cataloging in one workflow.

15. discussions
What non-conventional ideas do you have for improving library e-books (e-content) discovery?
What initiatives you have conducted or plan to do in your library’s technical services unit?
What impact the metadata we provided on our users?
Questions?