12.18.2008

New and Interesting twist to Enumeration

This has got to be a new occurence....even for the serials world.


"T....is published monthly in January, February, March, April, May, September, October and November/December by the Association for Career and Technical Education Inc...."


Ok. I count up to 8. Why do I have v. 83 no. 9 January 2009 in my hand? The only thing I can figure is that each year issues are pushed onto the next year till they hit 9. That is going to make it fun in 2009 --- February will be v. 84 no. 1, January 2010 will be no. 8 and February 2010 will be no. 9....making v. 85 no. 1 start in March 2010.


Maybe it's an oversight and the publishers are in the middle of changing enumeration and months to match and 2009 will be an anomaly and 2010 will be perfectly normal and logical in its numbering....!?

12.11.2008

Microfilm Splicing

It is *not* "the best of all possible worlds" but microfilm splicing does happen. I know the archival websites say you should not do it and advocate digitizing, ordering replacement film or having your film heat-melded by a specialty company...but realistically and financially, it is just not always possible to do any of those 3 things, so splicing does occur.

It is nearly 9 years into my career as a serials serf we ran out of splicing tape...! Trying to find a vendor that manufactures splicing tape is nigh to impossible. After trying the previous two vendors that we had used and finding that they had callously gone out of business in the intervening time period since our last order, we located a source.
There were no prices on the website -- which is scary enough. Then when we did get a hold of a live person and found out the prices....we were indeed in "shock and awe" of the cost. Unfortunately, we had to order supplies from them since they are the only one we could find -- to the tune of $65 for 1000 splicing tapes....plus shipping and handling of course. Here's hoping we never run out again...!

Hope Springs Eternal

It is that time of year in the library industry where old records, subscriptions and such wrap up and new ones crop up....



Another one of those things that is good in *theory* but not in practice.... at least it doesn't work *quite* that way in the world of serials.



Our library is now receiving January, February and March 2009 issues for some of our magazines....conversely, we just received one with the cover chronology of 2006.
Last week I received one with a cover chronology of 1999... What this means is that we've now paid for all of the extra years of those journals that have yet to be published and *hope* that they are published at some point.


Usually after 5 or 6 years our vendor puts a note on the relevant title "order when current" and merely holds on to the funds instead of sending them to the publisher. However, that has a problem all of its own. If the vendor does not realize that Journal XYZ has resumed publication (as they are wont to do) or has combined a bunch of years into one volume with an editor's note "We apologize to our readers about being behind on publishing. In order to get us back on track, there will be 4 combined volumes published this year...v. 34 1/4 1999, v. 35 1/4 2000...." And yes, this does happen -- more than one would expect!



In addition, there are the journals with odd subscription years that inevitably get caught out during a renewal...One journal has its renewal period that starts in November for the next year. So when we pay our renewal for January-December, we sometimes miss issues for January and February because the publisher didn't receive our funds in time for their deadline (even though we have had an ongoing subscription to this title for 50 years+).

Some journals that we would like to cancel, we get stuck with for an additional year because of their cancellation policies "can only be cancelled during the beginning of a calendar year...can only be cancelled within 3 months of subscription....can only be cancelled prior to the academic year....etc."



With apologies to Robert Burns...:
Should auld journals be forgot,And never brought to mind ?Should auld journals be forgot,And days o' lang syne?