Washington Research Library Consortium
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Providing access to electronic resources through ALADIN
Reciprocal Borrowing
Consortial Licensing
Cooperative Collection Development

(Adopted: January 1999)

Assumptions

The decision to direct searchers to an electronic resource represents a recommendation by or a collection development decision by the library. The choice of how and where to present the reference conveys meaning to the searcher and has an enormous impact on user access. References may appear in the ALADIN shared online library catalog (OPAC), as an ALADIN menu option, as a link from a library website, or in any combination of these. Decisions about where to provide these references should take into account factors such as the importance of the resource for university academic programs, quality and stability of the resource, and level of effort required to enter and maintain descriptive information and links. 

Guidelines

Those resources which are acquired through subscription (whether paid or free) clearly represent collection development decisions by the libraries and should be considered part of the libraries' "holdings". Library special collections also represent holdings, and descriptive information should be provided in the OPAC as an inherent part of the process of creating any digital image database of WRLC library special collections. 

WRLC libraries agree to catalog the following kinds of electronic resources in the shared ALADIN OPAC:

  1. Electronic resources for which a formal subscription is maintained, whether paid or free, in this order of priority:
    • All core and supplemental databases subscribed by WRLC on behalf of the member libraries 
    • Individual library subscriptions to full-text electronic resources published as separate titles 
    • Individual library subscriptions to abstracting/indexing or collection level databases (aggregated databases) 
    • Individual titles within aggregated databases IF the cataloging records can be provided by the database vendor
  3. Digital image databases created from WRLC special collections. The catalog should include records describing the overall collection and a finding aid if available. 

WRLC Electronic Resources Access Task Force

   American University:  Linda Chase
   Catholic University:   Ela Rymsza-Pawlowska
   Gallaudet University:  Jane Rutherford
   George Mason University:  JoAnne Keys
   George Washington Univ:  Debbie Bezanson
   Marymount University:  Gail Flatness
   University of DC:   Jack Martinelli
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