Yeah for D.H. Lawrence Review!

Kudos to D.H. Lawrence Review. I just received volume 34-35 2010. (No issues were published from 2005-2009.) Here is the exciting part: the editors put a note in the current volume that says "The Executive Committee has recommended that we date issues by the year in which they are published, rather than trying, largely in vain, to catch up with the earlier series..."

I can think of a dozen more publications that need to have this Executive Committee in charge of them!

A math journal

"Journal of _______ __________" used to be fairly on track with publishing and it even used some creative chronology to get caught up. It appears that they have given up, though, and just are going to publish at their leisure. I just received v. 35 no. 3 2006. No note from the publisher inside or any sort of explanation saying something along the lines of "we are going to do ___X___ and hope to be back on track in the next __x___ months" or anything like that.

I feel badly for any professor awaiting publication of this one....! Can you imagine the CVs and resumes that say "forthcoming publication(s)" and having this journal on your list? A professor might have to wait *years* before being able to change it to the "published article(s)" category.

So, what happens to the next 4 years of chronology? I just sent a query email to the publisher. Stay tuned for further developments...!

Publishers and creative publishing

Just received some issues today in the mail and they had very entertaining notes with them.


One of them says, in part..."Enclosed you will find five issues of Journal...." and "It is our goal to get the journal on schedule....anticipating [this] in 2011." This journal, in contrast to some others I could name, is only 2 years behind schedule. That is not bad, comparatively speaking.


However, the other package and its contents was a bit of a shock..."...Journal of .... Studies is beginning anew with the publication of vol. 1, nos. 1 and 2 (2010)...new series...Our last issue was dated 2005...."! Now this one did not change numbering or issues per volume or anything else...the publisher decided to just start a new series instead of changing the cover chronology. Gee. This is going to make checking this one in a lot of fun!


And then there is the wonderful journal that changed its name and numbering altogether, again, for the 3rd time in 2 years! Thanks guys for thinking of us! This journal will be such a breeze for the patrons to find...they just have to go through 3 different records to find the most current one....!

Playing catch-up

One of the journals we receive is behind by 3 years in publishing. This is not a novelty. However, they have a solution! They are going to publish the next three volumes as combined single issues! So I will be receiving v. 31 nos. 1/4 2007 and et cetera. My problem is that each "volume" is merely a 100 pages and that is the same size as a regular "issue number." So, that means that we're getting a 1/4 of the product for the whole price... The ironic chord in all of this,however, is that the journal is one about "ethics"!

Suspended animation?

Science Fiction now has become fact. This is made obvious by the print journal titles that we subscribe to that have appeared to be in deep "suspended animation." I don't know *why* they have been put into this state or at *what point in time* they plan to be readmitted to the land of the living, er, publishing.


At what point is it reasonable for a publisher to give up on a title and be honest with the subscribers that "yes, it *has* actually ceased publication" and stop taking fees each year? I have a list of publications that the vendor lists as "will order when current."


Some of these have been on this list since I started nigh on 10 years ago. Most of these publications are at least 6 years or more behind on their cover chronology. Several have been taken over by new publishers, which promptly raise the price while promising the moon and then...deliver nothing. One of the publications that is on my list of "suspended" titles kept promising to blossom into an online only publication. Three years in, said publication just notified the vendor that they were ceasing publication altogether.


I am not sure that these publishers realize what a mess these "suspended" titles can create or how much time they can consume. Each time I run a claiming report, these pop up. I promptly go to the vendor site and claim them, again, and wait for a response. Then I go into our ILS and do clean up or change them to an inactive control. Oftentimes, we are only aware a title has totally and completely ceased when we wind up with a large credit invoice from our vendor. Fortunately, our vendor lists what title the credit was for and this helps the process along. Then I have to clean up the MARC record...you can see how this snowballs.


Personally, I think there should be some sort of unwritten serials rule -- that if a title is "suspended" more than 2 years, the publication should cease altogether... and never be "reawakened" from "deep suspended animation"!

Cover chronology

There are days I think publishers enjoy torturing library staff with some of their odd decisions. I just received a journal that has the cover chronology v. 12 no. 2 Fall 2005. In the inside, of course, it admits to being published in 2009. At what point should publishers give up and send out a note to libraries and subscribers -- "sorry, we didn't publish between 2005 and 2009. We are now going to restart out cover chronology with v. 13 Spring 2009" and let the catalogers put a note in the record....and move forward....


That said, though, I am still waiting on a journal that suspended publishing back in 2003. It resumed publishing recently and changed publishers. It plans to keep its old cover chronology as well. *Sigh*