Taylor Periodical Administration System

Last updated: 01/03/2005 3:33 PM

 

The Taylor Periodical Administration System (TPAS) is a database-driven web application that provides a public search interface for looking up all periodicals (e.g. print and online) to which the Taylor libraries provide access. TPAS also incorporates an administrative interface for storing and managing administrative metadata about these periodicals.

Background

Given the right information, skills, and standards, it is our belief that there is plenty of room for cheaply and effectively developing a home-grown system to manage and present periodical list information to users, even for small academic institutions and/or public libraries. While several commercial applications are now available from a variety of vendors, they generally involve a signficant annual cost and possess limited capabilities for local customization and presentation of information. There may be an invisible workload line (say, if a library is managing more than x number of journals) which when crossed, makes it more feasible to choose the commercial route, and obviously there are many libraries who have chosen this path.

At Taylor, we decided to implement a home-grown system two years ago using ASP and an Access database mounted as a file on our external web server. It was developed using the part-time help of a Taylor undergraduate computer science student who was looking for real-world experience in database design and web application development. The initial system was somewhat basic and was constructed and maintained by using separate vendor title lists from each vendor to which we subscribed, combined with a title list of print periodicals maintained on an Excel spreadsheet. The search interface, known as the Taylor Periodical List, initially allowed the user to browse by the first letter of the periodical title but later on, the ability to do keyword title searches as well as restrict the search by format (print or online or both, with both being the default) was added. Once the user found the title he or she was looking for, if the periodical was available online, a hypertext link with the name of the database as link text was presented on which the user could click to go directly to the articles available in that particular database. In addition the user was given static full text dates that indicated coverage for each periodical in each database. Initially the number of periodicals searchable through this interface was around 4,000, but as more and more online, full-text journal article databases were added, this number swelled to approximately 8,000. Although accomplished almost entirely through student part-time help, the process of maintaining this database and search interface was relatively intensive due to having to manually merge title information from disparate vendor title lists, in addition to maintaining information about print subscriptions (adds and/or cancellations) throughout the year.

Project Goals

In spite of some limitations, the original application became "mission critical" for the Library. It quickly achieved the rank of second most visited e-resource on the Library's website after the online catalog. With this in mind, planning began in early 2003 for a revised, improved periodical management system whose goals included the following:

• expand the scope of the end product to incorporate maintenance of administrative information (e.g. subscription periods, cost, consortium information, publisher, reports, centralized statistics gathering, etc.)
  
  
• enhance the user interface to provide improved search capabilities including search by subject and ISSN in addition to keyword search by title
  
  
• provide more accurate and timely full text dates information
  
  
• switch to a more robust database architecture and scripting language to better handle increasing traffic and system load
  
  
• integrate TPAS with SFX where possible, particularly in regard to utilizing SFX's regularly updated Knowledge Base from which to derive up-to-date title list information for 99% of the periodical databases to which we subscribe

A new TPAS was implemented in October 2003, with the invaluable help of the same undergraduate computer science major who has worked on the application from the outset. A lot of work remains to be done to refine the application's usability both for users and staff. However, the new architecture and interfaces (public and administrative) are already proving to be vastly superior to the old system, and ongoing improvements are quickly being implemented. Perhaps the biggest enhancement yet to be implemented at this date is populating the subject fields to enable subject searching, although the database architecture is already set up to support it [see Changes and Enhancements section below for an update about this functionality]. TPAS currently supports access to and management of 10,962 unique periodicals.

 

Public Interface

Access to the public interface of TPAS is via the Taylor Periodical List, available as a link from the Library's homepage. While the periodical list is able to be viewed and searched by anyone, access to individual periodicals via hypertext links from within search results is restricted to members of the Taylor University community. The following screen captures show elements of the search interface (click on image to see full view).

Initial search screen

A sample search results screen

 

 

The administrative interface is restricted both by IP address and by administrative password. The following screen captures show the main interface screen as well as some of the screens available through selecting various menu choices (click on image to see full view).

Initial admin. screen		Database list screen
Database update screen		Add a periodical screen

 

TPAS was built using PHP 4.x and MS SQLServer 2000. Approximately 11,000 unique periodicals are available in the system out of 19,414 total periodical sources. Online periodicals from 37 different databases are included.

 

Changes and Enhancements

• New, simplified search interface for the public [Done]
  
  
• Addition/use of availability information from the SFX Knowledge Base, e.g. "from 1942 vol. 1 no. 1" or "from 1996" [Done]
  
  
• Addition/use of embargo period information from the SFX Knowledge Base, e.g. "Last 6 months n/a" [Done]
  
  
• Creation of simplified subject categories to begin to enable subject assignment and searches by subject, based on list of majors offered by Taylor [Done]
  
  
• Map title keywords to simplified subject categories to enable automated subject assignments [Done]
  
  
• Improve speed of monthly periodical database update process [Done]
  
  
• Simplify and improve the process for adding individual periodical entries (e.g. when a new open access journal is announced and we want to make it available via the periodical list) [Done]
  
  
• Add ability for the application to compare incoming, updated title information with existing titles in the database and to output the differences to a .html or .cvs file (this is particularly useful for aggregator databases, when one wants to see what periodical titles have been dropped from the database vs. what titles have been added since the last update) [Done]
  
  
• Add ability to automatically delete periodical information for titles that are no longer available in a particular database, as part of the monthly updating process [Done]
  
  
• Create several on-the-fly reports for management and statistical information
  
  
• Make application XML "friendly" to accept data exported in XML from the SFX Knowledge Base
  
  
• PHP 5.x support
  
  
• Add the ability for the application to support other database servers besides MS SQLServer 2000, such as MySQL or PostGreSQL
  
  
• Implement a post-update find and replace function to fix typos or other incorrect information

Whom to Contact for More Information

Please feel free to contact Steve Oberg at stoberg@tayloru.edu with any questions, suggestions, observations, etc. about TPAS.