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Re: Classification of periodicals/serials query Tammy Hefner 08 Oct 1993 19:59 UTC

I apologize for the delay in answering this topic, but I just got to it
yesterday.  Mary Washington College switched all its fiche and film to
LC classification.  The project which took two years to do, was
completed this past summer.  Much to the surprise of some faculty and
staff, the project went smoothly and has been well received on a whole.

We did not reclass current paper issues.  We decided that patrons would
not receive the idea well at all if they had to go get a call number
before they could just run to shelf and pull off the recent issue of
Time magazine.  Therefore, all paper issues are left in alphabetical
order until they are replaced by microform or sent to the stacks.

Yes, we have closed our manual shelf list, commonly refered to in the
library as "The Red Book".  We closed it as soon the entire conversion
was complete.  As you can imagine, some people were not thrilled and
were actually quite vocal about closing the book.  There just seems to
be no logical reason for duplicating in the book and having to maintain
it when everything you could possibly need is in VTLS.

Call numbers do not change when titles change.  We initially added a
digit or number to the end of a number if the title name changed but
changed our thinking quickly and decided it was not necessary.  On VTLS
we are able to modify card screens so that if you call up a title, all
its related titles will appear also.  At this moment I can not think of
any instance where we have changed a call number to reflect a title
change, merger, or split.

To my knowledge, we are still the only state-supported college in VA that
arranges any periodical holdings in LC order.

Out of simple curiosity, I am interested in knowing how long it took you
to reclass your holdings, who initiated the reclass, was it a struggle
to convince others of the benefits of creating a seamless library, and
who actually was involved in performing the reclass?

 Thanks!!!     Tammy Hefner, Serials Assistant