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Journal level — ISSN Load

How do you do it?

Simply download from your OPAC all of your ISSN numbers, saving the information to a text file where each ISSN is on a new line in the file. Using Data Loader in SFX, upload your ISSNs into your LOCAL_CATALOG target. That’s it. Now your SFX instance knows what journals you own and (perhaps more importantly) which one’s you don’t.

What does that do?

A couple of things to keep in mind:

You don’t need titles with your ISSNs

SFX will match the ISSN to the title for you, and in fact has no place for you to upload title information.

Upload limits

Dataloader doesn’t like uploading more than about 1,500 titles at a time. If you have 2,000 ISSNs you want to upload, you should divide them into two separate uploads of 1,000 a piece.

Object Lookup

You’ll need to edit the catalog’s getHolding service so that object look-up is set to “yes.” This tells the service to check your ISSNs before displaying the catalog link on the menu -- if the requested ISSN is not in your list, the catalog link doesn’t display.

Don’t forget about book requests

Your default getHolding service has a threshold set to ($obj->need('ISBN') || $obj->need('ISSN')), basically making sure that a request has an ISSN or an ISBN in it to ensure a proper search of your catalog.

However, now that you’ve uploaded your ISSNs, and the service does an object look-up of those numbers, the reference to ISBNs is unnecessary. You should change the threshold to $obj->need('ISSN').

What about requests that have ISBNs, such as a book chapter indexed in a database? You’ll need to account for this by creating a seperate "book" target with a getHolding service. Set its threshold to $obj->need('ISBN'). The best option is to use the Z39.50 lookup for this book target.

What you have at the end of the day, then, is two catalog targets: one with a getHolding that accounts for ISSNs, and does a look-up of your local titles before displaying, and a second one that accounts for the rarer ISBN, which then simply gives you a “blind” link to the catalog.