Thank you very much to the half dozen or so who have responded to my query
concerning accounting practices for membership vs. periodicals
subscriptions.  The consensus is that "memberships" which are held only
for the purpose of receiving journals, should come for the periodicals or
serials budget; those which are held for the purpose of receiving other
membership benefits such as voting privileges, discounts, access to
courses, etc. should be paid from the membership budget.  An example of
this would be our membership for ALA.

We would like to go to our accounting department with some figures on how
many libraries are treating memberships in this way.  If you wouldn't
mind, please send me a message (offlist) to let me know that your library
is dealing with this problem in this way.  Thanks for Patricia Thompson
for this suggestion!

Linda

Linda Harding
Periodicals Assistant
Elmhurst College Library
190 Prospect Ave.
Elmhurst, IL 60126

   ----- Original Message -----
   From: Patricia Thompson
   To: lindah@elmhurst.edu
   Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 4:28 PM
   Subject: Re: [SERIALST] Payment of "membership" invoices

   I agree with Jennifer van Sickle. You might need to have all the
libraries who do it this way send you something so you have numbers to
convince your accounting department that they are misguided in insisting
that you change it.

   Pat Thompson
   (Contact info at end of message)

   At 03:25 PM 12/2/2008, you wrote:

     We also pay for certain memberships in order to receive certain
     periodicals, and usually there is no other option.  Since these are for
     the benefit of library patrons and are unrelated to professional library
     staff affiliations, we would continue to get these through a
     subscription agent.  Your accounting department is making more work for
     themselves and incurring higher costs by issuing multiple separate
     checks.  I hope this is helpful.

     Jennifer van Sickle
     Serials Librarian & Sciences Coordinator
     Trinity College Library
     300 Summit St.
     Hartford, CT USA 06106

     jennifer.vansickle@trincoll.edu

     phone: 860-297-2250
     fax: 860-297-2251

     -----Original Message-----
     From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum
     [ mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Linda Harding
     Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 3:42 PM
     To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
     Subject: [SERIALST] Payment of "membership" invoices

     I hope that some of you will share with me how your library budgets and
     pays for membership invoices.

     As you well know, many "memberships" are, in reality, subscriptions to
journals.  That is, in order to receive the desired journals, you must pay
for a membership even though you will not use or even receive any other
membership benefits.  In the past we have paid for these out of our
periodicals budget.  This year our accounting department is insisting that
they be paid out of our "membership" budget.  For us, this will mean
extracting all such membership titles from our Ebsco invoice and paying
them separately.

     If there are others interested in this topic you might wish to reply
to the list.  Otherwise, a response to me "offlist" is fine.

     Thanks for your input.

     Linda

     Linda Harding
     Periodicals Assistant
     Elmhurst College Library
     190 Prospect Ave.
     Elmhurst, IL 60126
   Patricia R. Thompson
   Assistant University Librarian for Resource Management Services
   duPont Library
   University of the South
   Sewanee, TN 37383
   931-598-1657
   pthompso@sewanee.edu