Two of my student workers at our Periodicals public service desk spent
an hour between the two of them hassling with an irate faculty member, all
apparently because of a publisher's mistake printed in a journal.

The "Journal of Professional Services Marketing" says it is published
biannually.  Consequently, the bib record in OCLC says that, and therefore
our check-in cards do, too.   Well....we have two issues checked in for
each year since 1990 (v. 6). Sounds simple enough, until.....

The faculty member insists that -- of course! -- publishers would never
make a mistake such as that; it must be our "inept" check-in staff
who checked the wrong issues of the wrong title in on the wrong card,
according to the faculty member who thinks he knows better how to run
a library. WRONG!!!!

To complicate matters.  Haworth Press also messed up the numbering.
The publisher had sent out a notice that was supposed to clear up the
confusion, but unless I'm reading it wrong, it just makes things worse.
It says, "We regret the error in publishing the _Journal of Professional
Services Marketing_, Volume 7, Issue #2 and Volume 8, Issue #1 dated 1992
rather that the correct date of 1992.  You have received the two 1992
issues already and we will correct the schedule with Volume 8, Issue #2,
1993 of the _Journal of Professional Services Marketing_.  The next issues
will be:  Volume 8, Issue #2 - Spring/Summer 1993
          Volume 9, Issue #1 - Fall/Winter 1993
          Volume 9, Issue #1 - Spring/Summer 1994
Thank you for your understanding and cooperation."  End of message!

They shouldn't have bothered to thank ME for my understanding. I don't
have the foggiest idea what that message was trying to say!

First. It says "dated 1992 rather than the correct date of 1992" HUH?
Second: It lists two issues as Volume 9, Issue #1 -- one as Fall/Winter
   1993, the other as Spring/Summer 1994.  HUH?

Not to mention that the last several issues do not carry any chronology
that I could find, so who only knows what is supposed to be what. How-on-
the-sacred-grave-of-Harvey-Milk are indexes citing these issues?

Of course, all of our issues were checked-out at the time, so our students
had no idea what to tell the faculty member who was blaming them for
a major fiasco caused by a minor error on the part of Haworth that was then
compounded by a completely confused error report...meanwhile... Who's on
first?

Does any body have any idea how to straighten out this mess? I thought about
contacting the publisher, but immediately laughed at that idea.

I suggest, at least if nothing  else, that Haworth drop the word
"Professional" from the title of the journal.  It's not earned in this case.

-Steve Savage
 University of Kentucky Libraries

PS.  I suppose that we should send an error report form to OCLC to have
the incorrect frequency corrected in the 310 field, but without having
all of the issues on hand to verify and photocopy, I'm reluctant to do
so. Would someone else who has access to a larger file of the title
volunteer to do this?  If so, please let me know, otherwise I'll try
to track down details and proof to send OCLC. Heaven only knows what the
"Freq" area of the fixed field says!