Ex Libris MELvyl Tells (EL Mel Tells)!

Volume 2, Number 2, May 2003

In this issue:

• Finding Journal Articles in Melvyl-T
• The Great Load Test

Finding Journal Titles in Melvyl-T

There are several ways to find journal titles in Melvyl-T.

1. For an "ordinary" (what journal title is ever ordinary?!), say, Journal of Library Automation, just put in any keywords from the title in Journal title, e.g., journal automation. You can also search for journals, such as Journal of Marriage and the Family, by looking under Journal title, Journal of marriage, words as phrase if you want the words to appear as a phrase, exactly in order, within a record.
2. If your patron walks up with only a journal abbreviation, you can try several approaches.
3. 1. One is to put the abbreviation right into the Journal title dialog box, without any truncation marks, e.g., ann rev ecol syst. Looking at the MARC record (MARC tells all!), you can see that a cataloger has used the 210 field, Abbreviated title, to input both Annu. rev. ecol. Syst and Ann. rev. ecolog. Syst for the full title, Annual review of ecology and systematics Punctuation is optional here, and you can use a mixture of both the abbreviations to pull up your title. Try another one: Biochem biophys res commun
   2. Another variation of this is to enter the first two or three abbreviated terms in Exact title search followed by the truncation symbol, e.g., Journal Title Exact = biochem biophys res*
   3. Don't do, however, what we used to do in legacy Melvyl, e.g., truncate all your words, ann* rev* eco* sys*, as this will bring Melvyl-T to a screeching halt.
   4. You can also try the abbreviations approach in Browse. For example, use Browse journal title begins with j am acad to find Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology
4. If you have a single word title, like Science or Nature, the best approach is to go directly to Browse, and put in your single word there. You need to be aware that Browse is left-anchored, so Nature needs to be the first word in the title. You can't use quotes in Melvyl-T to limit to JUST that word….
5. Getting back to the point above, that the MARC record tells all, a librarian from UC Riverside asked why, when searching for Journal Title Newsweek, Art News came up. The reason is clear if you look in the MARC version of the display record for Newsweek, the 710 field (Added entry corporate name [Newsweek]) is being picked up and making Art News display. This is what we do in legacy Melvyl as well, so if you look for PE Newsweek in legacy Melvyl, you'll also see Art News.

The Great Load Test

The Great Load Test of Melvyl-T occurred between 9:30 and 9:45 a.m. on May 1, 2003. Approximately 500 live users and from 500 to 1,000 simulated users were directed at Melvyl-T simultaneously. This simultaneous use created a point-in-time load that exceeds historic Melvyl use and any actual load the new Melvyl is likely to receive anytime soon.

Overall the system performed relatively well during the test, given the huge number of simultaneous users, although response time was clearly impacted. CDL staff are examining the results - both system performance and your feedback descriptions - in detail. We have discussed these with Ex Libris and will work together to ensure performance is acceptable at peak usage times. We are also doing some fine-tuning based on the load test. For example, many users got "Server busy - maximum number of connections" messages and we are working to make configuration changes to reduce, if not eliminate those turn-aways in the future. After all our consultation and tweaking are completed, we may call on our users once again to do another load test.

Thanks to all of you who pounded away, making the test a success.