At the request of Chuck Costakas of the Open WorldCat team, I'm getting back
to you all on Jonathan's good question about how an ISSN link is handled. At
the moment, I think we're in agreement that it doesn't work exactly as it
should. That is, we believe a link to an ISSN should be treated differently
than a search of that ISSN:

 - If you travel the _link_ to http://worldcat.org/issn/00253154 you should
see only the journal records that match that ISSN.
 - If you _search_ the ISSN, then you should retrieve all records that have
that ISSN, including individual articles.

At the moment, you can get just the serial records by limiting to that
record type; for example:

http://worldcat.org/search?q=issn:0025-3154+dt:ser

So thanks for pointing that out and we'll see what we can do to make it
function like what is described above. If you want more information, Chuck
is willing to be contacted directly at:

Chuck Costakos
OCLC
Phone: 614-764-6255
Toll-Free: 800-848-5878 ext 6255 (USA and Canada only)
Fax: 614-764-0496
Email: [log in to unmask]

Thanks,
Roy

>
> ------ Forwarded Message
> From: Jonathan Rochkind <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: Code for Libraries <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 16:10:08 -0400
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] weird worldcat results?
>
> So if I actually want "the periodical with this ISSN assigned", and
not
> "a record that happens to exist for a article in this periodical"...
is
> there anything I can do?
>
> Would that ISSN assigned to a record that's really for an article not
> for a title be considered bad data? Are you supposed to have an ISSN
on
> such a record?
>
> Jonathan
>
> Nicole Engard wrote:
>> Here's my guess.
>>
>> That ISSN is attached to several records:
>>
>> http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=0025-3154&=Search&qt=owc_search
>>
>> So it just picked one since that's all it can show.  If you see the
> search
>> results the first result is the journal itself.
>>
>> It all depends on how the catalogers enter the data into OCLC in the
> first
>> place ...
>>
>> Nicole
>>
>> On 9/4/07, Jonathan Rochkind <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> Check this one out:
>>>
>>> http://www.worldcat.org/issn/00253154
>>>
>>> Why is it returning a specific article as the result, instead of the
>>> record for the entire journal with issn 0025-3154?  Does that URL
not
>>> mean what I think it means? The record for the journal title is
there
> in
>>> Worldcat, as you can see by clicking on the journal title hyperlink.
>>>
>>> I wonder if this is location (zip code) dependent, and nobody else
is
>>> even going to see this but me. But for me, that URL does not return
> the
>>> journal title, but instead returns the record for one particular
> article
>>> that happens to be in the journal.
>>>
>>> Jonathan
>>>
>>> --
>>> Jonathan Rochkind
>>> Digital Services Software Engineer
>>> The Sheridan Libraries
>>> Johns Hopkins University
>>> 410.516.8886
>>> rochkind (at) jhu.edu
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
> --
> Jonathan Rochkind
> Digital Services Software Engineer
> The Sheridan Libraries
> Johns Hopkins University
> 410.516.8886
> rochkind (at) jhu.edu
>
> ------ End of Forwarded Message
>
>
>
> NEW FEATURES:
>
>
> Query:
> OCLC Number:        1756690
> Title:              Journal of the Marine Biological Association of
the
> United Kingdom.
> ISBN:
> ISSN:               0025-3154
> Author:             Marine Biological Association of the United
Kingdom.
>
>

--



------ End of Forwarded Message