Name changes and irrational decision making

A journal is changing its name -- again -- for the fourth time. Thankfully, we only keep current print holdings and it doesn't effect us much, but pulling down records and updating them, creating MARC records in the ILS does take time and money to do. I realize that as a theological teacher's journal, it probably does not take such mammon-like things [like money] into consideration....

And I will not deign to address the issue of the Educational journal that renames itself every year to fit the political correct term of the moment for special needs students...This one is fun for students doing research to track down -- since we archive it on microform....and they have to hunt about for the current title record and then find it in the microform area.

It seems that some fields of study are more prone to change titles, like the infamous journal Teacher that changed to Teacher, Teacher and Instructor, Instructor and etc. over a short period to "better reflect the outlook of the magazine" according to the editorial in said magazine.

One of the few fields I would think it would make sense to change titles would be science, specifically in chemistry and physics. These journals actually change their scope when they change titles, and that is supposed to be one of the considerations on wheteher something 'counts' as a title change or not. However, at the point that one has 17 journals with the same name and different subtitles, like a physics journal I know of, I think it would be prudent to spin off titles altogether!

Does anyone work for a publisher and know how they decide these things?

Kindles and magazines

I'm not sure how I feel about "subscriptions" to weekly magazines on kindles or other e-reader devices. We have kindles in our library, but each one only has a preloaded set of books on it.

And how can you make magazine content more accessible to the visually impaired if it is on a Kindle?

And then there is the lack of archivability with an e-reader with content that may "expire" on a certain date...

The one reason I *might* enjoy magazine or even newspaper content on an e-reader would be that the soy ink would not rub off on my hands as I am reading an article!

Now that they are getting "programmable" paper that can be reused, I am sure some of the magazine providers will want to go into that format as well. I can hardly wait. No more worries for the stores about "please display until...." because on that date, the paper can change itself!

Indices

Those younger than Generation X, probably do not see a need for an index. After all, everything is "on the web" and "searchable" right?

The index does still have a purpose -- especially for those titles that are not accessible in a database or through a proprietary website. An index is still handy for titles that are accessible electronically, since a lot of the proprietary sites have embargoes for more current issues.
In addition, I cannot tally the number of incorrect citations that I have seen and it helps to locate an article if there is some sort of index, regardless of the format of the serial.

While I am on the topic, it would be a great boon if all indices were published in some sort of consistent manner. Publishers that publish an index two years after the volume was released are asking for it to be lost or not linked to the original item. Placing an index in the front of the next published volume is also problematic -- especially if there is no outward clue to this fact. And for some sort of bizarre reason, known only to publishers I am sure, indices often do not appear in electronic archives on proprietary sites.