6 messages:

1)____

Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 14:51:40 -0700
From: Beverly Butler <butler@LIB.STATE.CA.US>
Subject: Re: Issue arrival times (Dani Lichtenberg)

I receive my personal issues of magazines about one week earlier at home than
we do at the library.  Our subscription agent is Faxon.

Beverly Butler
butler@lib.state.ca.us
California State Library
Acquisitions/Serials

2)_____

Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2001 07:22:54 -0400
From: Barbara Eastland - Library <eastland@HAL.MUHLBERG.EDU>
Subject: Re: Issue arrival times (Dani Lichtenberg)

It has been my experience in the years I've worked in serials that the
"popular' magazines that you refer to almost always arrive later in my
library than the personal subscriptions arrive in homes.  I think it has
some connection to the fact that most of these popular titles are handled
by clearing houses who are responsible for the mailings.  And we all have
had experiences with such clearing houses as Neodata, etc.

While that probably won't satisfy your patron, it's a fact of life that
most magazines get to the home before they get to a library.

Regards,
Barb

Barbara B. Eastland              VOICE: 484-664-3561
Serials Manager                    FAX: 484-664-3511
Trexler Library                         eastland@hal.muhlberg.edu
Muhlenberg College
2400 Chew St.
Allentown  PA  18104

> Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 17:17:44 -0400
> From: Dani Lichtenberg <p005386b@pb.seflin.org>
> Subject: Arrival times
>
> I would very much appreciate hearing some discussion about arrival dates
> for subscriptions received via such services as EBSCO.
>
> One patron is adamant that our subscriptions arrive significantly later
> than those of individual subscribers.  There are certain scholarly
> journals (as we've been discussing recently) that simply are produced
> later than they are supposed to be.  But he is refering to regular
> commercial magazines.  I know the ones that I like to read seem arrive in
> my branch right around the same time that I see them on the newsstands or
> in my own mailbox.  But my patron is complaining about financial magazines
> such as Smart Money and Fortune.  Can it be that Newsweek and Vogue come
> in right on time, but the inscrutable EBSCO gods send the financial
> magazines in late just to bedevil would be investors?
>
> Does this patron have a valid complaint?  He is sure that "his" magazines
> are being sent to a warehouse somewhere and that they just sit there until
> they are yesterday's news and that then and only then are they sent to our
> library.
>
> Does anyone have any feelings about this theory one way or another?  Are
> institutional subscriptions handled differently than individual
> subscriptions?  A slower postage rate, perhaps?  A different distribution
> system?
>
> Thanks for your help,
> Dani Lichtenberg
> Palm Beach County Library System
>
> p005386b@pb.seflin.org
>
3)______

Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2001 07:40:13 -0400
From: "Heath, Janet P" <HEATHJ@MAIL.ECU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Issue arrival times (Dani Lichtenberg)

Dan:
   Institutional subscriptions are handled differently.  I have always
heard, and I have worked in serials for almost twenty years,  that
individual subscriptions come out first and that institutional subscriptions
are always last on the totem pole.  I wouldn't go so far as to say that they
sit in a warehouse somewhere, but we are considered last when it comes to
shipping them out.

Janet P. Heath
Serials Coordinator
Health Sciences Library
East Carolina University
600 Moye Blvd.
Greenville, NC  27858-4354

Phone   252-816-2234
FAX       252-816-3369
e-mail:  heathj@mail.ecu.edu

4)_____

Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2001 08:05:12 -0400
From: Nancy Hanacek <nancy.hanacek@law.csuohio.edu>
Subject: Law Libraries with Online Systems from Innovative Interfaces

Hi Dani,
Browse through some of the library catalogs at this site.  You can see
their check-in records and determine if your cycle of receipt is the
same of yours.  Hope this helps.
Nancy
http://www.bu.edu/lawlibrary/tech/lawlibs.htm

5)_____

Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2001 09:37:17 -0400
From: GEORGIA SMITH <smithgr@LYCOMING.EDU>
Subject: Re: Issue arrival times (Dani Lichtenberg)

I'm not sure about financial magazines specifically, but I know from
having worked in a shipping/receiving department at a previous library
that our librarians got their personal subscriptions before the library
received their copy.  I think it's just the way the publisher prefers to
handle the distribution.

Georgia R. Smith
Instructional Services Librarian
and Assistant Professor
Snowden Library
Lycoming College
Williamsport, PA  17701
voice: 570-321-4352
fax: 570-321-4090
smithgr@lycoming.edu

6)_____

Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2001 08:50:52 -0500
From: "Skwor, Jeanette" <skworj@UWGB.EDU>
Subject: Re: Issue arrival times (Dani Lichtenberg)

***Is this fellow related to the person here who is convinced we hide the
_Chronicle of Higher Education_ in a cave for at least a week to keep it
safe from prying eyes before we bring it in & shelve it?

***Generally speaking, I would say our (Faxon) subs get here the same time
as any place else.  And if you are in the habit, as I am, of looking at
other libraries holdings, you will see that at any given time, there is a
fair difference between the date a library 100 miles away from yours will
get any specific issue, and the date you get it.  Or, as someone recently
suggested, you can check a library that uses Innovative Interface & see when
any particular issue actually arrived.

***I can speak specifically to two titles:  1) I get _Consumer Reports_ at
home, and we get it here at the library.  Often it arrives on the same day;
almost always within the same week.    2)  There was a particular
cover/story on _Rolling Stone_ awhile back I wanted my neice to see.  We
left on a trip to North Carolina the day after it arrived at the library,
were gone 10 days.  We checked at every bookstore we stopped at (and we do
tend to have a problem passing a bookstore ;0) and couldn't find it - the
ones on the shelf were *two issues* behind.  We were home over a week when I
saw it in a bookstore & emailed here that it was out.

***Periodicals are sent, what, 3rd class?  The PO can deliver them pretty
much as they feel like.  Sometimes they lay in a bag at your po; sometimes
they lay in a bag at my po; sometimes someone else gets 'em first.

***Our postal system has enough problems as it is.  Can you imagine them
trying to work with a system that has them sending out mail at different
times/different rates, according to who the *purchaser* is?

***If you come up with a cure for your Pain In The Office; let me know; I'd
like to try it on mine.

Jeanette L. Skwor
Serials Dept.
Cofrin Library
University of Wisconsin - Green Bay
Green Bay, WI 54311-7001
(920) 465-2670