Re: Serials check in? Hank Young 09 Nov 2007 17:02 UTC
Hi Susan, At the University of Florida, we have several African and Latin American journals which are not available online. I would hardly call them "inferior" or behind the times ... the publishers can be struggling to survive, especially the ones which are subversive to their government's interest! These journals are a challenge to check in, as "missing" issues may not exist, and if it were not for our check-in records, it is sometimes likely that no one else in the USA would know if an issue came out. For that matter, our users would not know what issue we have. Of course, medical journals, for the most part, are a different story. But then, we also have a lot of local journals dealing with Public Health issues and traditional-medicine (medicine mixed with shamanism and faith healing) which are also not online. With the Public Health journals, it is not always a priority of the government to disseminate the information on the internet. The cultural insights gleaned are worthy of research, and they are often cutting-edge simply by their existence. Of course, I am on the side of "you *must* check in print journals", especially when electronic equivalent does not exist. We are so lucky here in the USA to have the electronic resources we do. And I am very fortunate that I am in cataloging and not acquisitions/check-in! - Hank Young University of Florida -----Original Message----- From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU] On Behalf Of Susan Wishnetsky Sent: Friday, November 09, 2007 10:02 AM To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU Subject: Re: [SERIALST] Serials check in? At 04:10 PM 11/8/2007, you wrote: >My question is - if you didn't check it in, how do you know if you are >missing it because it was never received? You don't. But if it has an electronic version, it doesn't matter. And if it doesn't have an electronic version, it's obviously an inferior journal which nobody reads, so it still doesn't matter. The check-in people you cut from the staff were the ones who also did claiming, so nobody's claiming anything anyway. If you're wasting some money on paper copies you're not getting, well, you're saving money on staff, so it all evens out. If that's not enough, you can charge your patrons for ILLs. If they don't like it, enlist them to write letters to those dinosaur paper journals urging them to get with the times, already. How's that? SW >Just a thought, > >Susan Andrews > >Head, Serials Librarian >Texas A&M University-Commerce >P.O. Box 3011 - Library >Commerce, TX 75429-3011 >Susan_Andrews@tamu-commerce.edu >(903)886-5733 >"Your Success Is Our Business" Susan Wishnetsky Electronic Resources Librarian Galter Health Sciences Library Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University 303 East Chicago Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60611-3008 (312) 503-9351 FAX (312) 503-1204 pasiphae@northwestern.edu