Overview
Make your library’s electronic serials collection more visible to users and staff by adding your electronic serials holdings to WorldCat in an efficient and cost-effective way. Increase the value of the investments your library has made in your electronic serials collection, serials management services and in WorldCat.
Keep your holdings up-to-date
The OCLC eSerials Holdings service will make your library’s electronic serials collection more visible and increase its usage. Available at no additional charge to OCLC member libraries, the service will make it easier for library users and staff to find and use the electronic serials in your library collection.
OCLC is pleased to be partnering with WorldCat Link Manager, EBSCO, Serials Solutions and TDNet to automate the process of setting and maintaining your holdings for electronic serials in WorldCat.
Whether you work with one of the providers listed above, or submit holdings directly into WorldCat, the service exposes your electronic serials collection more fully through online search tools and interlibrary loan applications—all without adding to your cataloging workload. In this way, the eSerials Holdings service helps to bridge the gap between the worlds of print and electronic materials.
MARC record delivery available
If your library subscribes to the eSerials Holdings service, you can receive MARC bibliographic records that correspond with your eSerials holdings updates. Records can be customized to meet your needs, with options including add or delete fields and customized URL links in 856 fields. Options are available for record delivery.
There is a nominal charge for the record delivery option, which is based on the number of titles delivered. Record delivery pricing uses a multiyear maintenance model that is divided between the first and subsequent years. First-year pricing reflects set-up of the service and delivery of the largest number of records, and subsequent-year pricing reflects the reduced, annual maintenance activity of records added or deleted.
How the service works
After you order the service via the OCLC Online Service Center, we will contact your serials management provider to begin the process of receiving your electronic serials holdings data for ISSN-based resources. Once the process begins, we will automatically set and maintain journal title level holdings against existing electronic serials MARC records in WorldCat for your electronic serials collection each month.
This collaboration allows you to efficiently contribute your library’s electronic serials collection holdings to WorldCat and ensures that these holdings are current and accurate, as well as visible to your users. If your current serials provider is not one of the four participating providers—EBSCO, Serials Solutions, TDNet or WorldCat Link Manager—you have two options: you can either contribute your holdings data directly to OCLC, or you can nominate your provider as a potential participant by contacting us.
Make your holdings more visible
Through greater visibility in WorldCat, the service increases access to, and usage of, your library’s electronic serials collections. WorldCat allows users to discover your content on the Web through WorldCat.org.
In addition, you and your library colleagues will see the journal title level holdings for your electronic serials collection through Connexion, FirstSearch, the WorldCat Resource Sharing service, the WorldCat Collection Analysis service and your Group Catalog.
Manage ILL requests
By adding your electronic serials holdings to WorldCat, you will increase the visibility of your collection to interlibrary loan librarians everywhere. Through the WorldCat Resource Sharing service, your library’s interlibrary loan staff will quickly see which electronic serials your library subscribes to so they can fulfill more requests from your collection, decreasing the need to borrow and increasing the value of your electronic serials collection.
The increased visibility of your electronic serials collection across the OCLC membership will increase resource sharing requests directed to your library related to electronic serials.
Your ability to fill these requests will depend on your local ILL policies and your agreements with serials providers. Through the WorldCat Resource Sharing service, you can control which requests your library receives by setting your library’s preferences in the OCLC Policies Directory. You can automatically deflect all electronic serials requests to the next library in the lender string, choose to fulfill ILL requests from only specific libraries in pre-existing groups, or you can choose to accept all requests for review. Whichever policy you choose, you are in control.
Link to electronic serials' full text
The eSerials Holdings service will enable users and staff to see what ISSN-based electronic serials your library holds while searching WorldCat in FirstSearch and other OCLC services. But how can they link to full text? By registering your OpenURL link resolver with OCLC, authenticated users and staff can click on the link to your resolver to see where they have access to full text and link to the most appropriate copy. In this way, you can leverage the investment you have made in your resolver and connect users directly to the content they’re looking for.