The Title List function in your LOCKSS box allows you to report on the holdings of your LOCKSS box or the content available in the LOCKSS network as a whole. The latest release of the LOCKSS software includes some new options, and this post provides a general guide to usage of the Title List feature.

Please see the post View your holdings with LOCKSS titles export for an introduction to the Title List feature.

Title List main screen

Basic Report Options

The main Title List screen presents you with several options for the report, described below. Note that the defaults will produce a standard KBART report, but these options allow you to customise that to better suit your needs.

Scope

This option allows you to specify the scope of the data you want to report on:

• Available – all titles available in the LOCKSS network. This is all the content LOCKSS users can select from.
• Configured – the titles that you have configured for collection on your institution’s machine using Add Titles.
• Collected – the titles that have successfully collected on your machine. A title must be fully collected before it will appear in this list; partial completion is not enough.

Type

This option allows you to filter the titles to include only journals or books if you need to:

• Journals – show only journal titles
• Books – show only book titles (those that have an ISBN)
• All – show all titles

Data Format

This option specifies the format of the data that is output from the reporting tool; the default Title Ranges (KBART) format displays a line for every complete range in a title, while the other options allow you to consolidate these into a single line per title.

The KBART coverage_notes field will contain a description of the complete ranges covered by each row, therefore documenting where the coverage gaps are in the consolidated formats.

• Title Ranges – show a row for each unbroken range within a title (this is the default KBART format).
• Titles – show a row for each title, consolidating all the individual unbroken ranges into a single range using the outermost start and end volumes. Note that the single range specified in this format may contain coverage gaps.
• SFX DataLoader – show a row for each title, with the coverage_notes field listing coverage ranges in the SFX DataLoader format.

Output Format

This option specifies the digital format in which the report will be produced:

• TSV – tab-separated format
• CSV – comma-separated format
• On-screen – the report will be turned into HTML and displayed on-screen

Having selected these options, press the List Titles button to generate the report.

A Title List report showing the customise option

The above shows the top of an HTML report. Notice there is a link to return to the main Title List page, and a button for customising the report you have generated.

Customisation Options

To provide finer-grained control over what gets into your report, there are customisation options allowing you to specify which fields to output and in what order.

Select the Customise Fields button either on the Title List screen or the HTML report screen. You will see these extra options appear at the bottom of the Title List screen:

Title List customisation options

Coverage Range format

The default KBART output reports each unbroken range of a title on a separate line. Sometimes it is more useful to have a single line per title, with start and end points. The coverage_notes field is therefore used to elaborate which specific ranges are fully available within a title listed in a particular row. This field can display data in a number of formats:

• Year Ranges – a comma-separated list of ranges, e.g. 1996-2002, 2004-2006, 2009-
• Year(Volume) Ranges – a comma-separated list of ranges including volume in parentheses e.g. 1996(1)-2002(7), 2004(9)-2006(11), 2009(14)-
• Year Summary – a concise format showing only the start and end of the whole range, e.g. 1996-
• Year(Volume) Summary – a concise format showing only the start and end of the whole range, e.g. 1996(1)-
• SFX DataLoader – this is the format defined by ExLibris for use with their SFX DataLoader utility, e.g. $obj->parsedDate(“>=”,1996,1,undef) && $obj->parsedDate(“<=”,2002,7,undef)

Note that year ranges can have an empty end point, meaning they extend to the present. The summary formats are for convenience and do not indicate where there are coverage gaps. The SFX format represents the same information as the year(volume) format but in a more verbose format.

Field Ordering

The field ordering box lists all the default KBART fields in their default order. You can edit the contents of this box to change which fields appear in the output. The ordering will also be reflected in the output report. On the right-hand side is a list of all the valid field names – be sure to include at least one of the identifying fields or there will be no way to organise the title records!

Note that the first two fields will be used to sort the resulting list.

Omit empty columns

Some columns have nothing in them due to a lack of appropriate data. Select this option to automatically omit such columns and simplify the report.

Reset/Cancel

If you decide you don’t want to customise the output after all, or have made a mistake, you can select either:

• Reset – to reset the field ordering list to its original values
• Cancel – to cancel customisation and go straight (back) to the report output

Finally, press List Titles to produce the report, or Hide Customise Fields to skip the customisation and use the three default report configuration options of scope, data format and output format.

Direct URL access to reports

It is possible to access a range of reports directly without manually selecting options on the Title List screen. This is useful for those applications where an automated update of the LOCKSS box’s holdings is required, for example when updating a knowledge base periodically. The default report can be retrieved by requesting the URL

http://lockss.box:8081/Titles?format=tsv

There are five configuration options for direct URL reports, which can be specified as URL parameters. The first four correspond to the basic report options described earlier:

• format – output format: tsv, csv, html
• scope – data scope: available, configured, collected
• type – title type: journals, books, all
• report – data format: kbart, titles, sfx
• coverageNotesFormat – format for the coverage_notes field: year, year_volume, year_summary, year_volume_summary, sfx

The bare minimum is a format parameter. So for example a TSV report, in SFX report format, on titles configured in your LOCKSS box, can be retrieved from:

http://lockss.box:8081/Titles?format=tsv&report=sfx&scope=configured

Using the report

There are also several common uses for the reports generated by the Title List feature:

• Reporting what is available on the LOCKSS network. This can be used to populate a knowledge base in a link resolver such as SFX, or cross-referenced with an institution’s subscriptions to produce a list of what should be added to LOCKSS.
• Reporting what titles an institution has configured their LOCKSS box to collect. This can be used in institutional reporting on LOCKSS, or cross-referenced with subscriptions and available titles to find out what is missing from your configuration.
• Reporting what has been successfully collected by LOCKSS. This report can indicate where there might be problems, or be used in institutional reporting.

We plan to produce format options for other link resolver products as necessary, though the standard KBART report should be sufficient for many applications. After the current phase of user interface development, the reports should also be useful in configuring your collection list with less manual effort.

If you have any further use cases for these reports do let us know at edina@ed.ac.uk.