Jane Holmquist
jane@astro.princeton.edu

In mid-January, I spent my Sunday on a busman's holiday, joining the "Creative Ideas in Technical Services Discussion Group" from 4:30-5:30 p.m. at ALA Mid-Winter 2001 in Washington, DC. We had one hour to identify and solve all the problems encountered by technical services librarians! We could choose to sit at any of six round tables in the room, each with an assigned discussion topic. Since I am on the search committee for a newly created position at Princeton--the Digital Resources Coordinator--I headed for the round table devoted to Electronic Resources (e-books, aggregator databases, e-journals, websites, etc.) These are the topics we were supposed to discuss:

• Licensing issues. (Who negotiates, who signs, what makes or breaks the signing of a license?)
• Collection development/acquisitions issues. (Overlapping responsibilities? How are decisions made on the resources? Who makes the decisions? What happens when there are problems? Who deals?)
• Archival issues.
• Cataloging issues.
• Budgetary issues.

We went around the table answering for our respective institutions the first question: Who negotiates and signs the license? Answers ranged form head of acquisitions to university librarian, from systems librarian to legal counsel! No consensus there!

Nor were there clear-cut answers to the questions: "What happens when there are problems? Who deals?"

The issue we spent the most time discussing was cataloging: the lack of a standard treatment for cataloging electronic resources. Some catalogers believe in a single catalog record with multiple holdings statements indicating the various formats (print, e-journal, microform, etc.) while other catalogers believe strongly that each format should be given a separate catalog record.

Think what effect this has on hotlinks from the Library's online catalog record to the actual electronic journal; and again, on the links from the references to other journals. What happens if the ISSN for the e-version is not included in the catalog record? What happens if no ISSN is included? What if it's wrong? Simple answer: Linking won't work, no matter how sophisticated the algorithm. (I must admit I 'd forgotten that the print and electronic versions have different ISSNs).

Unlike most brainstorming sessions I've attended, we didn't gather to listen to summaries of each table's discussion. I think everyone was relieved, having spent all our energies focussed on a single topic for a solid hour!

What's the point of all this you may ask. I think we should begin preparing now the list of "burning issues" we want to discuss when we gather in San Antonio for the SLA conference in June. Are the issues described above relevant to you and your library? Or are there others more pressing? Please keep your creative ideas and suggestions coming! Send them to me at jane@astro.princeton.edu or to any of the roundtable moderators (see list in November 2000 online PAM Bulletin).