"And if it doesn't have an electronic version, it's obviously an
inferior journal which nobody reads, so it still doesn't matter."

That may be generally true of STM journals, but is certainly not true of
the humanities and various areas in the social sciences. Africana
studies, Latin American studies, areas in the fine arts, small poetry
magazines, and even within the area of healthcare, significant smaller
research publications in some areas of behavioral healthcare are still
distributed in print. Some of the smaller learned societies, their
associates and affiliates, for example, may not seem important to us,
but when you have a tenured faculty member requesting the title, you may
very well need to check it in and claim it. For research libraries
specializing in some of these disciplines, they are more likely to be
lenders than receivers of ILL with rarely held titles, resulting in slow
ILL delivery if they drop their print subscription.

But we are all looking forward to the day.......

Patricia Pettijohn
Head, Collection & Technical Services
Nelson Poynter Memorial Library
University of South Florida St. Petersburg
140 7th Ave. South
St. Petersburg, FL 33701
727-553-4407
ppettijohn@nelson.usf.edu

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the
Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the
media.
The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public
libraries.
~ Kurt Vonnegut August 11, 2004

-----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