SUNCAT Blog

SUNCAT is the Serials Union CATalogue for the UK research community.

SUNCAT is a free EDINA service enabling researchers, librarians and others to locate serials held in libraries throughout the UK. The catalogue contains information on both print and electronic serials, including journals, periodicals, newspapers, newsletters, magazines, annual reports and other publications of a continuing nature.

SUNCAT currently contains serials' information from over 70 UK research libraries, including the British Library and the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales. New libraries continue to be added to the catalogue on a regular basis.

Thursday, 31 July 2008

SUNCAT updated

SUNCAT has been updated. Updates from the following libraries were loaded into the catalogue in the past week. The dates displayed indicate when the files were received by SUNCAT.

  • Cardiff (23 July 2008)
  • Durham (24 July 2008)
  • Liverpool (25 July 2008)
  • Natural History Museum (23 July 2008)
  • Southampton (28 July 2008)
  • Wellcome (23 July 2008)

To check on the currency of other libraries on SUNCAT please check the updates page for further details.

Friday, 25 July 2008

SUNCAT Updated

SUNCAT has been updated. Updates from the following libraries were loaded into the catalogue in the past week. The dates displayed indicate when the files were received by SUNCAT.

  • Bristol University (08 July 2008)
  • CONSER (15 July 2008)
  • Exeter University (04 July 2008)
  • Glasgow University (14 July 2008)
  • Hull University (01 July 2008)
  • ISSN (15 July 2008)
  • London Business School (08 July 2008)
  • Napier University (07 July 2008)
  • Newcastle University (02 July 2008)
  • Royal Society of Medicine (03 July 2008)
  • St Andrews University (11 July 2008)
  • Swansea University (15 July 2008)
  • University College London (07 July 2008)
  • Warwick University (18 July 2008)
  • York University (08 July 2008)
To check on the currency of other libraries on SUNCAT please check the updates page for further details.

Monday, 21 July 2008

SUNCAT and the UK Research Reserve

The SUNCAT team met up with the UK Research Reserve (UKRR) Project Manager, Jean Crawford, last week to discuss SUNCAT’s role in the UKRR, the UKRR’s future plans and how SUNCAT might provide greater assistance in Phase 2 of the UKRR.

The UKRR has just received £9.84 million in HEFCE funding to proceed with Phase 2 of the project which aims to preserve access to low use print journals in Higher Education by storing copies in the British Library and selected Higher Education institutions allowing the remaining participating institutions to dispose of their print runs, freeing up significant space and resource.

SUNCAT contains the journal holdings data of all of the UKRR Phase 1 libraries. Currently it is used as an initial check on where journals, identified by UKRR participants for disposal, are held in other UKRR libraries. SUNCAT also displays the UKRR flag on journal holdings where this is supplied by our Contributing Libraries.

Both UKRR and SUNCAT share similar aims regarding the quality of journal data. Both are keen to see records updated, particularly to include ISSNs where these are missing, to allow for the accurate identification and matching of records for the same title. In the UKRR this ensures that participating libraries can confidently dispose of titles in the knowledge that they are being stored elsewhere and in SUNCAT’s case it allows researchers to quickly identify the location of titles throughout the UK.

One area where SUNCAT may be able to assist the UKRR further is by providing them with reports of journals which are not widely held in the UK and can therefore be considered “at risk” even if they have not been formally identified for disposal by UKRR participants.

SUNCAT will also consider adding any new libraries which join Phase 2 of UKRR which are not already in the catalogue to ensure that SUNCAT continues to be a comprehensive search and location tool for the UKRR participants. However, any new libraries added to SUNCAT will continue to be considered on a number of merits asides from membership in the UKRR.

Other possibilities which were highlighted in the meeting were that of adding the UKRR as a Contributing Library to SUNCAT or providing a UKRR “view” onto the SUNCAT catalogue. This view would include only UKRR libraries and exclude any electronic only records, making the search, discovery and checking process more efficient for the UKRR participants.

Finally, another planned SUNCAT development, involving deep-linking from holding records on SUNCAT directly to the equivalent record on the Contributing Libraries own catalogues, was also discussed. Almost all of the SUNCAT Contributing Libraries are now updating their records regularly, with the majority on a monthly basis, but linking out to records would mean the most up-to-date holdings information would be easily accessible to UKRR participants.

Thursday, 17 July 2008

SUNCAT updated

SUNCAT has been updated. Updates from the following libraries were loaded into the catalogue in the past week. The dates displayed indicate when the files were received by SUNCAT.

  • Cambridge University (07 July 2008)
  • Dundee University (30 June 2008)
  • Edinburgh University (08 Apr 2008)
  • National Library of Scotland (07 July 2008)
  • Newcastle University (02 July 2008)
  • Queen's University, Belfast (16 Apr 2008)
  • Royal College of Music (03 July 2008)
  • Royal College of Nursing (03 July 2008)
  • Royal Institute of British Architects (07 July 2008)
  • Southampton University (30 June 2008)
To check on the currency of other libraries on SUNCAT please check the updates page for further details.

Wednesday, 9 July 2008

SUNCAT updated

SUNCAT has been updated. Updates from the following libraries were loaded into the catalogue in the past week. The dates displayed indicate when the files were received by SUNCAT.

  • British Library (28 June 2008)
  • CONSER (01 July 2008)
  • Hull University (01 July 2008)
  • Kent University (01 July 2008)
  • Leeds University (25 June 2008)
  • London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (25 June 2008)
  • Nottingham University (01 July 2008)
  • Warwick University (01 July 2008)
To check on the currency of other libraries on SUNCAT please check the updates page for further details.

Wednesday, 2 July 2008

SUNCAT Newsletter

The latest SUNCAT Newsletter (July 2008) is now available at http://www.suncat.ac.uk/news/newsletters.html

This issue includes information about

  • Enhancements to the SUNCAT interface
  • OpenURL linking
  • Web 2.0 developments
  • MARC downloading service
For further information about SUNCAT please see http://www.suncat.ac.uk/ or contact the EDINA helpdesk at edina@ed.ac.uk

SUNCAT updated

SUNCAT has been updated. Updates from the following libraries were loaded into the catalogue in the past week. The dates displayed indicate when the files were received by SUNCAT.

  • Cardiff University (25 June 2008)
  • Durham University (23 June 2008)
  • Glasgow University (20 June 2008)
  • Natural History Museum (20 June 2008)
To check on the currency of other libraries on SUNCAT please check the updates page for further details.