Title: List of serials indexed for online users Grace-Ellen McCrann 05 Aug 2003 20:37 UTC
5 August 2003 Dear Shana, I'm not a Serials Librarian per se, but I am Chief of Government Documents here at the City College of New York. I've run into situations such as you describe more than once with Gov Docs ... Federal Agencies seem to delight in doing/permitting odd things done to their serial docs. Federal Agencies are always merging, splitting, changing their names, adding departments, merging departments, changing just one word in the title, going from annual to biannual to monthly and back to annual again, changing their SuDoc number, etc., etc., etc. ... it can make you want to run away and join the circus :>) Here's what I do ... My basic concern is making it easy for the patron to find whatever it is that they are looking for. In addition, my personal experience on the public service side is that patrons just do not look at more than one record for an item. So even if you have separate records for a microfiche version, a print version and an online version of a doc, patrons will, almost always, just look at the first record they come to. So, as long as the document is essentially the same, I put all my Gov Doc serial holdings for a title on one record, irregardless of the format, minor changes in title, changes in SuDoc number, etc. So in this case, I would deep-six the online record and put all the holdings together in one record. I add lots of 500 General Notes in the Bib record to spell out any changes/variations and in this case I would add a 500 Note that the publisher for issues/years such-and-such is Bernan. I also create separate holdings records for each variation, in this case I'd have one for print by the NLM, one for print by Bernan and one for the online issues. This way all the information about this item is in one place and the patron sees it all together. I also write lots of of z-field Public Notes and would add one in this case that issues from 2002 onwards are published by Bernan. Unless I'm writing a mystery, I don't believe in making my patrons hunt for clues! Kind regards, Grace-Ellen Grace-Ellen McCrann Chief, Government Documents Division The City College of New York Cohen Library, NAC Building, Room 2/305 138th Street & Convent Avenue New York, NY 10031 (212) 650 5073 gemscot@yahoo.com --------------------------- --- "Shana L. McDanold" <mcdanold@SLU.EDU> wrote: I'm writing for help. I've never encountered this particular problem before and I'm not sure what to do with it. I can't find anything in the rules about this one. The title is List of serials indexed for online users. According to the OCLC record (#9199853; DLC#84-649762) the title ceased publication in print in 2000 and became online only (OCLC#45556198; DLC#00-220224). Presumably the National Library of Medicine stopped issuing a paper edition; they are now made available in PDF. Simple enough. The problem is that I have a 2002 *print* edition in my hands and according to our records, we have a 2003 edition and withdrew a 2001 edition. There are no other records for print editions of this title in OCLC other than a previous title. The publisher on the 2002 edition is different. On the t.p. verso are various notes and a printing date. Two of the notes read: "Published by Bernan, a division of the Kraus Organization Limited." "As a service to its customers, Bernan issues print versions of selected U.S. Government publications that are otherwise primarily made available by the issuing agencies only in electronic form. Bernan does not claim copyright in U.S. government information." So, what do I do with it? Should we open back up the print record and add a note about the change in publisher? Or is a new record warranted? The problem I see with a new record is that other than the publisher, it's the same publication with the same title. Since there is a record for the online edition, should a note be added that it is also made available in print by said publisher (i.e. the single-record format in reverse)? My supervisor and the senior serials librarian are stumped on this one. Any help would be appreciated. Did anyone else encounter this problem or something like it? How did you handle it? Thanks, Shana McDanold -- Shana L. McDanold Serials Cataloger Pius XII Memorial Library Saint Louis University E-mail: mcdanold@slu.edu __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com