Improving the user experience: Adding print holdings to the SFX Menu using Aleph X-Services and custom portfolios

Abstract

For some time we have wanted users to be able to see a journal title’s print holdings display alongside its online accessibility. We have also wanted that users be able to perform a journal title search—whether for electronic or print-only held—in one place; that is, we do not use MARCIt! and consequently the SFX A-Z is our only complete access point for our electronic-journal holdings. So, how to get SFX to talk to Aleph X-server (in our case) and display print-holding details in the SFX Menu? How to have the SFX A-Z also retrieve print-only-held journal titles? How to handle journal titles without ISSNs? In our presentation we would like to share with you how we have gone about bringing our users a more complete experience via SFX by setting up different Targets and Target Services utilizing their own Parsers, Parse Params, Displayers, and Thresholds, as well as Local Objects with and without jkeys.