The Ohio State University Libraries
Policies and Procedures
Technical Services
OSCAR Database Management

Document:	Cataloging of Electronic Resources (Working Document)
Date:	July, 2007
Effective:	July, 2007
Created by:	SER CAT (CF & BSD)

Points of Awareness

1. The number of collections of e-resources (monographs, journals, etc.) for which it is desirable to have individual MARC records for the contents is increasing (dramatically).
2. Some of these resources are free, and others are not.
3. Some vendors provide MARC records (free or for cost), and some do not.
4. In some cases, OhioLINK member libraries contribute to the cataloging of OhioLINK-based resources.
5. Our vendor, Serials Solutions, provides MARC records for many free and paid e-journal collections. However, they do not provide records for e-books (yet). They are considering how to provide records for e-books and other e-content.
6. Technical Services cannot track additions and deletions to e-collections.
7. URL maintenance is time-intensive. The contents of large record loads cannot be checked to determine if there are existing print bibliographic records.

Proposed Cataloging Guidelines for Electronic Resources

1. MARC record sets of acceptable quality that are available for the components of an e-resource collection will be loaded into Millennium.
2. Collections that contain more than 10 items will be cataloged at the collective title or web site level if there are no MARC records available to load from vendors or web site hosts.
3. MARC records for individual e-books, e-journals, etc. that are purchased will be added as part of the routine workflow.
4. In the case of print resources formerly held in the OSUL collections that have moved to online-only format, bibliographic records will be added for these titles.
5. For individual e-books, e-journals, etc. that are free and requested by collection managers, individual MARC records will be added unless the resources are part of a collection hosted on a web site that includes more than 10 titles. If the collection includes more than 10 resources, then the cataloging will be at the collection level. If a collection manager wishes to request the top 10 resources that he/she wishes to be cataloged from a larger collection/web site, those 10 will be cataloged in addition to the collection level record.
6. Links to electronic versions of resources will not be added to bibliographic records for print versions except government document serials, and serials cataloged individually by OSUL staff (this excludes journal titles for which our only access to electronic content is through databases). Any other needs for linking will be handled by special request.
7. Requests for special consideration will be considered on a case by case basis.

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