Re: Periodicals shelving in public libraries... -- Peter Picerno Stephen Clark 01 Apr 2002 14:02 UTC
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: Periodicals shelving in public libraries... -- BuddyPennington Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2002 08:45:29 -0500 From: Peter Picerno <ppicerno@NOVA.EDU> One person's 'popular' periodical is another person's 'scholarly' journal: what would you use as criteria to decide what is 'popular reading' and what is not?? Such titles as Reader's Digest (popular??!!) is indexed, so indexing is not a possible criteria. That leaved, it seems to me, judgements to be made on more arbitrary and therefore, possibly, unsound criteria. In terms of patron ease of use, it would be better, I would think, if patrons can go to ONE location where ALL the holdings are shelved in ONE alphabetical range, and it would certainly save time and exasperation on the part of reference librarians who would, if the collection were split into several sections, have to explain to confused and irate patrons why a title is in one place and not another. Just my Monday morning $.02. Dr. Peter V. Picerno Acquisitions and Serials Librarian Nova Southeastern University Libraries 3301 College Avenue Fort Lauderdale FL 33314 (954) 262-4662 FAX (954) 262-3946 -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Periodicals shelving in public libraries... Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 10:16:37 -0600 From: "MD_Buddy (Buddy Pennington)" <MD_Buddy@KCLIBRARY.ORG> Hi all, We currently have our 980 periodicals in closed stacks, but we are moving into a new building that will allow for the periodicals to be in open stacks. The question has come up whether we should pull out the popular titles and separate them from the other periodicals. This would result in three periodical collections: the newspapers, the popular periodicals, and the non-popular periodicals. All would be arranged in alphabetical order by title. I am leery of doing it this way for several reasons. It creates more work for staff and customers end up looking in two places for the periodicals they want. You also have to deal with signage directing customers to the popular periodicals shelf, not to mention determining what exactly is a popular title (and trying to make that consistent with what the public considers popular!). My thinking is that it would be easier on both staff and customers if the periodicals were all in one section, arranged alphabetically, and the newspapers were in a different section, also arranged alphabetically. Has anyone out there tried the "popular periodical" approach? Or does anyone have any thoughts on the matter I can share with our library planning committee? Buddy Pennington Document Delivery Librarian Kansas City Public Library md_buddy@kclibrary.org 816-701-3552