Many social sciences monographic series of the "working paper/discussion paper" type are now available in electronic form. This project has several facets, the first of which is to link many of these "working paper/discussion paper" type serial publications to their Web-based electronic versions. These links provide access to electronic versions of these publications. With this project LC provides more timely, comprehensive, and cost effective access to these series. In a second area of activity the Library's Serial Record Division is creating electronic serial records for a number of high research value monographic series that have not been represented in LC's catalogs, thereby opening up a rich, new source of information for researchers who may now access electronic versions of those items. So far, these efforts have provided access to the full electronic texts of more than 30,000 individual monographs. As a further enhancement, a pilot project has been launched to create electronic resource records for the individual monographs of selected series. In all, Web Access to Publications in Series currently has links to more than 300 series. A noteworthy enhancement to both the project and for Business Reference services has been the creation of a web-accessible database of Technical Reports and Working Papers in Business and Economics for series covered by the project. The database can be accessed at http://www.loc.gov/rr/business/techreps/techrepshome.php This provides brief information on the organizations creating these working papers and reports, and offers an additional access point for researchers to both the electronic versions as well as links to the print versions of these publications at the Library of Congress.

In addition to the link to the Business and Economics page cited above, additional information about the project and some samples are also available.

In another pilot project, the Library's Serial Record Division is creating electronic serial records for a number of high research value monographic series that have not been represented in LC's catalogs, thereby opening up a rich, new source of information for researchers. One example is the "Finance and economics discussion series" published by the Federal Reserve Board. To date, over 5220 monographs have appeared as part of this series.

This project has also led to the creation of electronic resource records for the individual monographs within selected series, such as the the World Bank's Policy research working papers, the Hoover Institution's Essays in public policy, and the Occasional papers of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. By harvesting bibliographic data directly from the World Bank's web site for example, it is possible to provide access to the abstracts and full electronic texts of the monograph as soon as they are published.

A computer application, the "Web Cat Assistant," has been developed to aid catalogers in creating bibliographic records foro these monographs, and more detail on this application can be found on the BEAT web page describing it at http://www.loc.gov/catdir/beat/webcat

Some examples of the option to view or download abstracts or even full-text information found through the links provided by this project can be viewed here, and examples of the display of abstracts and opportunity for further searching on the Web sites of other institutions referenced by the electronic links in the catalog record can also be viewed. Finally, several examples of linking to these materials from actual Library of Congress catalog records are presented.

Initiated in FY2001, the "Web Access to Publications in Series" project was designed by Gabriel Horchler, Social Sciences Cataloging Division, and questions regarding the project may directed to him at

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