Japanese E-resource Metadata Issues

Haruko Nakamura Yale University Library

Workshop on Electronic Resources Standards and Best PracticesCEAL annual meeting pre-conference workshop, 25 March 2014, Philadelphia

OutlineIssues: Lack of resources and awareness

Scarce e-resources / contents

No/Poor metadata ebooks aggregated databases

Lack of proper procedures and communication

Scarce e-resources / contentsIndexing databases are still dominantSmall number of e-books and e-journalsVery few front list titles ( 新刊 ) are published as

ebooks

↓Majority of e-books have been already published in

print and many libraries already own them. Therefore, not many libraries purchase e-books,

thus they are not yet familiar with the Japanese e-book market.

MetadataLack of individual links of e-journals and e-

books providedFew vendors provide MARC records for OPACPoor interface function Confusion of diverse presentation of e-

resources (interfaces, access points, metadata, etc.)

eBooks Around 7,000 Japanese e-books available (mostly

science subjects)

Provides metadata in discovery tools like Summon, but…

Availability of MARC records are not consistent

Good MARC records, but poor interface function Transliterated headings (880 fields) Series headings Volume number Subject headings Collections base links

MARC record sample – Beautiful!

No transliterations

No series headings

No subject headings

No volume numbers

“ 新日本古典文学大系” as series

No Series Headings

Aggregated Databases

e-books and e-journals in one database

No MARC records

Provides metadata in discovery tools, but..

No direct links to individual titles or to several individual interfaces

Insufficient metadata? No ISBN, published year, transliterated titles, etc.

Lack of proper procedures and communicationContent updates (added, deleted and

changes of titles, etc.)Who takes care of this? Communication with

e-resources librarians (internal), vendors and publishers.

Japanese resources in databases supplied by other countries? (ex. Medical*Online, Factiva)

Annals of Gunma University Graduate School of Health

Sciences [Ja] ( 群馬保健学紀要 )

Other e-resource issues

Certain contents are not available outside Japan

Users have to install client softwareDifficult license agreementsUsage statistics not being availablePrice

Future Access at Yale Univ.

Knowledge base

Discovery Service

E-journal and E-book MARC

records in catalog

E-journal A-Z list

Database A-Z list

Link Resolver

Conclusion - Working Together With

Librarians (liaison to users)

andPublishers and Vendors (content creators)

↓ Increase access points of e-resources Improve awareness of e-resources among users Increase the use of e-resources Librarians can justify subscriptions of e-

resources Everyone wins!

Thank you!