Tonight OCLC's EPIC will be turned off for good. (It has the deadly Y2K flu.) I for one am sorry to see it go. I will miss the ease of forming complex searches and the depth of its coverage.
OCLC is replacing the service with First Search. Unfortunately, the replacement is not fully functional yet. You cannot do truncated searches, display all holdings, or search on call numbers as you used to be able to do with EPIC. Some of these capabilities will be included in the First Search upgrade coming in August, but until then, OCLC has apparently left EPIC subscribers high and dry.
Fortunately when I needed to do a truncated search today I still had an alternative. (I had only an abbreviated citation to a journal and could not locate the exact name for an ILL.) Fortunately good ol' EPIC came through with just hours left in its life. (The journal was published in Poland, titled in Latin. Who would have guessed?) Thank you EPIC. I shudder to think what I would have done had the attorney waited until tomorrow with the request.*
OCLC: Can you speed up the First Search upgrade? Please?
Other vendors: Please do not sunset a functional service without having the replacement fully operational and tested. (And, thank you Questel for keeping Orbit up and running through November.)
--Jeff
The opinions expressed herein are mine, and not necessarily those of my employer, its successors or assigns.
* Although I may have been able to search WorldCat through STN International. Has anyone used WorldCat through STN? I have never tried this, but may have to over the next month or so.
Jeffrey J. Berns
Law Librarian
Birch, Stewart, Kolasch & Birch, LLP
8110 Gatehouse Road
Suite 500 East
P.O. Box 747
Falls Church, VA 22040-0747
U.S.A.
tel.: +1-703-205-8090 ext. 6118
fax: +1-703-205-8050
bernsj@bskb.com
http://www.bskb.com/
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