Let Me See That eBook: Managing Cataloguing and Access through Collaboration

Abstract

Electronic resources have become a vital part of research collections. Online journals and databases are solidly planted in academic library collections and in the research habits of faculty and students.

Over the past several years, academic libraries have seen this increasing demand for electronic resources expand into electronic books. Collection budgets have shifted to meet this demand through the increased acquisition of electronic books and electronic book packages. However, the sheer number of titles involved has made providing digital access to electronic books through traditional cataloguing extremely challenging.

It has become clear that traditional in-house cataloguing of electronic books is neither feasible nor sustainable, even with cooperative cataloguing tools such as Z39.50 and WorldCat. And as cataloguing departments see decreases in staff resources but increases in the number of titles requiring access for users, they are forced to consider new ways of managing catalogue records.

Like many other institutions, the University of Calgary has chosen to use external sources of catalogue records for electronic books. It has become evident from doing so that publishers, academic libraries, vendors, and library service providers need to collaborate on an expanded scale in order to ensure sustainable workflows for academic institutions and the best possible digital access for users.

This paper covers the challenges that the University of Calgary has faced with electronic book cataloguing and digital access and its new-found success in managing these activities by partnering with Serials Solutions, Yankee Book Peddler (YBP), and ebrary. The focus is on the collaborative efforts made by all of these parties to make electronic resources available on a mass scale through the library catalogue and beyond.