Introduction
Your system can be used to catalogue online resources, including websites, electronic documents like Word and PDF files, online services, e-books and e-journals. Legal and business libraries may also catalogue unpublished documents like case reports, law reports, opinions, templates, styles, precedents, guides, explanatory notes, publications, etc. This article explains how to catalogue electronic and online resources.
The principles of cataloguing online resources are not very different to cataloguing print resources: the first principle is to serve the convenience of the user. In this case the user needs to find the resource and then access it online.
Instructions
Create records in your catalogue
- If your item has an ISBN you may be able to download bibliographic information using AutoCat.
- Alternatively, you will need to manually create a Title, Copy, and Copy Item just as you would for print publication.
- Why do you need a Title, Copy and Copy Item?
- The title records describes or creates meta-data about the online resource.
- Even though there is no physical copy you still need a Copy record because this contains information about where the item is located, e.g. “Online – Internet”, and information about the life cycle of the item, e.g. “Available”. A copy record is important because the status controls which titles are visible in the web OPAC to users.
- Finally a copy item or volume is required because this controls borrowing rights or permitted access to the online resource.
- There are a few fields you should pay particular attention to when cataloguing online resources:
- The Media Type of the Title – select something appropriate, e.g. website, e-book, PDF document. First, make sure you have added descriptors for online resources to your Media Types Authority List.
- The Location of the Copy – make it clear that this item isn’t physically located in the library, e.g. Online or Electronic as the parent Location and a sub location which describes where it can be found, e.g., Intranet, Internet, Shared Network folders, Lexis-Nexis, Westlaw, e-platform, Website, etc. First, make sure you have added Locations and Sub-locations for online resources to your Locations Authority List.
- The Lending Type of the Volume – if this item is not borrowed, set this to “Not Applicable”. Users may be able to borrow e-books, which are licenced on similar lines to using printed books, in which case chose the correct loan type like “standard loan” or “e-book loan”. First, make sure you have set default lending types to your media types for online resources in your Media Types Authority List.
- Tips for other Title fields:
- Publication date: if a publication is serial in nature like journals, encyclopaedia and law reports – whether online or offline – generally you can leave the publication date blank because it is constantly changing. On the other hand, Word documents, PDF files, e-books and many other electronic files may still have a date created and you can enter this date in the publication date field.
- ISBN: if you have an ISBN for a set of publications, then this could be entered but there is no point in entering an ISBN for a single volume in a catalogue record describing a set or service. Likewise, if you have a DOI – Digital Object Identifier for the set / service then this can be entered. e-books have an ASIN and these could be entered in the ISBN field, but may not validate.
- Classmark: although a classmark is often used interchangeably with the term shelfmark, it actually represents a subject classification. In a physical library it means users can browse the shelves and find books on similar subjects classified together on the shelves. With electronic resources or a mix of print and electronic resources it is still useful for users to be able to browse or search by classmark in your system and find resources on the same subject listed together. So, the same principles apply, you can still assign a classmark where appropriate to electronic online resources.
- Subjects: Again, it is very helpful for users if you add subjects to your catalogue record so users can find the resource when searching or browsing by subject.
Adding a link to the file or online resource
It is very important that you add a link to the online resource via the Links tab so the user can access it.
It is very helpful if you make sure that this link is shown in the search results so users can go straight to the electronic resource without further clicks. To learn how to display the link in search results read this article.
If you have catalogued a document then you need to upload the file to your system so users can access it as a link. Read this article about how to add electronic documents to catalogue records. On the Add New Link window, don’t forget to enter ‘friendly’ Display Text, found under the More tab, so that your users know what they’re clicking on.
Adding an image
Online resources and unpublished documents don’t always have cover images. Nevertheless, it’s a good idea to add an image to give the user a visual clue as to the resource type. This could be a logo for a website or an icon for a file type, e.g., Word icon for Word documents. You could use the vendor’s logo for resources hosted by e-book platform vendors or online resources providers. Please see the relevant help topics for help with: