At the risk of adding more garbage mail to the system, I agree that my
crabby response was probably inappropriate and probably more the result
of a severe sinus headache brought on by this being the pine pollen season
than by the mere seemingly endless repetitions of a definition which has
not changed in any significant way in at least 25 and probably 50 years.

I frequently find that the standard definition is not, in itself,
understandable to outsiders and needs considerable explanation.  Perhaps
we could adopt a new one?  I believe I remember Michael Gorman stating
that anything which is not a monograph is a serial.

At the risk of being facetious, I would suggest that serials manager is as
misleading a term as serials control--one may cope with serials but one exerts
no control over them, managerial or otherwise.  However assuming one is a serial
   s manager--as head of a serials department, would I qualify?--one would
presumably be familiar with at least a few standard formulas like the AACR2
definition of a serial and understand that merely repeating this to an
audience of those unfamiliar with serials work would not really let them
know what is and what is not a serial.  Fortunately I am rarely asked to
address groups and make public statements about what serials are--possibly
because I am known to be crabby and impatient.

So--if I made anyone feel badly, I am very sorry.  I will attempt to be more
polite in future.

Thomas Sanders, Serials, Auburn University, AL (tsanders@auducvax)