Re: Haworth journal subscriptions Bill Cohen, Publisher, The Haworth Press, Inc. 14 Sep 2006 01:32 UTC
Barb: I will answer your note off-list. Many, many thanks for writing! The lateness problem with Science & Technology Libraries should be corrected by the next mid-volume period of time. Bill Cohen, /Publisher & Editor-in-Chief/ The Haworth Press, Inc. www.HaworthPress.com Dietsch.Barbara@EPAMAIL.EPA.GOV wrote: > Bill, > > We have had serious problems in the past with our subscription to the > quarterly Science & Technology Libraries. Since 2001, when we began our > subscription to this title, we have faithfully paid our subscription > vendor each year for a complete year of S&TL. > > Our problems began when the title became (was?) seriously behind in > publication. This was confounded by the aspect that the publication > dates on the journal webpages at the time didn't reflect the actual > journal cover dates. This made it very difficult to track down where > the problem was when we did not receive our issues in 2003 and 2004. We > are still missing volumes 22 and 23. > > Looking through my records, our EBSCO invoice for 2003 has good detail. > It says that the payment in 2003 will be applied for volume 21 (pub. > dates 2001-2002). Then the next year in 2004, our Basch invoice (which > had no details), charged us one year's subscription rate, but has the > "Period" listed as 01/01/2004-12/31/2004. So begins the problem. The > title is behind schedule and when Haworth is paid in 2004, they apply > the payment towards volume 24 (pub dates 2003-2004). We now have a gap > of two volumes although we have paid for a year's subscription every > year since 2001. > > The problem arises when the publisher of a quarterly that normally > publishes one volume per year tries to "catch up" and publishes two > extra volumes in a year. I don't think most subscription vendors are > going to pay out of pocket to cover Haworth printing two extra volumes > in a year to fix what is a publisher problem. > > Here are the holdings for UNC-Chapel Hill from their online catalog: > > v.19 (2000-01) > v.20 (2001) > v.21 (2001) > v.22 (2001-02) > v.23 (2002) > v.24 (2003-04) > v.25 (2004-05) > > Notice that recently the publication schedule seems more current > although we have not received any 2006 issues although it is September. > > I probably wouldn't be going to such lengths to detail our problems with > S&TL in this forum, but when I called Haworth Press customer service to > try to work out this problem, I was told that we had only paid for one > volume for that year. > > When Haworth did this, a lot of libraries were actually penalized. When > I tried to explain to the customer service representative that we > couldn't just "come up" with 2 extra "years" of subscription money, she > didn't quite understand the concept. It was very frustrating and to > think that it was a library journal in which I had spent hours trying > figure out the problem and to obtain the missing > issues.............despite our paying for a subscription each year. > > Another thought, if late publication schedules are beyond control, can > you provide instructions to your billing and customer service staff on > how to prevent the problems I encountered? Perhaps working more > proactively with the subscription agents? The vendors are under the > same assumption in that a quarterly generally only has one volume per > year. > > Enough said. I know I'm a bit verbose, but I felt you should know how > being excessively late and also publishing more than one volume (for a > quarterly) per year affects your customers. > > barb > > barb dietsch | serials coordinator > epa library | unc contract staff > 109 tw alexander drive | mail code c267-01 > research triangle park, nc 27711 > phone: 919.541.0726 > fax: 919.541.1405 > dietsch.barbara@epa.gov >