Investigating the quality and maintenance issues of bibliographic records provided by the e-book supply chain: Using the operations of the Taiwan academic e-book & database consortium as an example

It is an important trend to expand the use of bibliographic records from the supply chain for libraries. However, what are the sources of vendors' bibliographic records? Their quality? How do libraries deal with these bibliographic records? Are they satisfied them? This study first drawn 1,080 bibliographic records from 29 e-book products, and MarcEdit was used to check their quality and 14% were found to contain errors. Secondly, this study interviewed 12 vendors and found out that bibliographic records of western books were mostly copied from the OCLC, and there were also bibliographic records from the original vendors who commissioned outsource companies to do the cataloging process. In addition, there were those cataloged by Taiwanese manufacturers themselves. Lastly, this study sent questionnaires to Taiwan Academic E-Book & Database Consortium members to survey their satisfaction on bibliographic records provided by vendors and their recommendations thereof. This study shows that most libraries have inputted the bibliographic records of the e-books into their OPAC system and are generally satisfied with the bibliographic records provided by the vendors, though opinions vary on the accuracy of these records.