AIMSS
EDINA and Serials Solutions used ONIX for Serials SOH messages to update holdings in the SUNCAT national union serials catalogue.
Full Project Title
Automating Ingest of Metadata on Serials Subscriptions
Summary
SUNCAT is the national union catalogue of serials held by UK research libraries and is based at the EDINA data centre at University of Edinburgh. Keeping SUNCAT up to date with electronic serials data for over 60 libraries is a challenge. EDINA receives the data from many sources in a range of formats. The licensing agreements are also complex and the serials covered by each agreement may change. EDINA reasoned it would be more efficient if publishers, aggregators, and libraries all transmitted holdings data in a standard format. ONIX for Serials SOH (Serials Online Holdings), one of the ONIX for Serials family of standards, is a format designed for just that purpose.
EDINA
and Serials Solutions collaborated on this project to use SOH to update the holdings data in SUNCAT. Serials Solutions is a publication access management service (PAMS) and has a knowledge base of holdings data for its library customers, many of which are SUNCAT libraries. During the project, Serials Solutions created SOH messages with holdings data for two customers and transmitted it to EDINA. EDINA then parsed the messages, extracted the serials holdings and online service data, matched the serials to SUNCAT records, and updated the holdings, mapping SOH to the MARC 856 tag.
AIMSS demonstrated that SOH can indeed be used to update serials holdings in library catalogues. The standard carries the required data elements and is fit for purpose. It was relatively easy for Serials Solutions to develop a capability to create the SOH messages, and for EDINA to use them to update the holdings data in MARC21 records. They did encounter some practical problems matching incoming data to existing records. Matching was done using the ISSN as an identifier, and the problem arose where either the incoming or existing record lacked an ISSN. It was therefore an issue related to their data, not the ONIX for Serials SOH format.
Outcomes
As the standard is fit for purpose, the project team argues that more take-up is desirable. Wider use of the SOH standard would benefit union catalogues like SUNCAT. In principle there are many scenarios for using SOH involving single publishers/aggregators, PAMS, single libraries, and consortia, and these scenarios are discussed in the final report. Transmission from PAMS to library or consortium (as in this project) would seem to have advantages, as a PAMS has holdings data for many libraries.
Outputs
Reports
The project’s Final Report (PDF) to JISC documents the work in detail, including how the SOH messages were created, parsed, and used to update the SUNCAT records. The mapping between SOH and the MARC 856 tag is given. The report includes an interesting case study by Serials Solutions documenting the work from a PAMS perspective.
Publications
- F Guy, Automating Metadata Loading for Serials Subscriptions: A Case Study Using ONIX for Serials (Serials Online Holdings) to Update Records on SUNCAT, Serials, 2006, 19 (3), 220-229.
Further Information