March 2003 Update.  The Libraries completed a year-long project to upgrade our 5-year old LibraryWeb publishing system for current, licensed electronic resources. Our new, more powerful process now involves extraction of records ejournal and electronic reference tools directly from our online catalog, loading into the enterprise SQL system (IBM's dB2) that acts as our Master Metadata File, and the generation of real-time lookup and browse functionality.  This enhanced system allows us to create interfaces and retrieval methods that are optimized for electronic resources in a way that cannot yet be done in our online catalog; it also provides a bibliographic knowledge base that will be used for other types of value added services, such as database advisers, research guides, and quick bibliographies.   

The next phase of this development will entail allowing selectors and bibliographers actually to supply annotatations (scope, related resources, search tips, etc.) to our local online catalog records for e-resource titles so that this information can be displayed for end-users both on our LibraryWeb and in the OPAC.  

During the past year, we have also successfully incorporated additional item-level ejournal records from Serial Solutions and other sources into our OPAC and Master Metadata File, allowing users to see current ejournal coverage and holdings for many titles.