Hi,

I was there last August.  Having spent 10 weeks backpacking in Europe, I
arrived to my new job as a serials librarian and quickly realized that my 1
class on serials in library school was not going to cut it.  I went out and
bought a book titled Management of Serials in Libraries (Thomas E. Nisonger,
1998).  I think it does a decent job of covering all of the basic
territories of serials management (physical processing, cataloging,
subscriptions, exchange lists, etc.)

My experience was that I simply ran the operations as they had been run
before.  A few months later, when I became comfortable with that, I began to
ask questions about the operations in an attempt to improve them.  I also
tried to automate as much as possible. I now run an operation that is much
more efficient than before (they had 4 student workers doing God knows what
before.  I now have one) and provides more for our users and staff.  I have
managed to integrate our electronic journals with the library's holdings
into a database that is searchable on a web search form from the library's
homepage (we had a printed list kept at the reference desk, before).  And I
have used Access to create a master serials database that keeps track of our
subscription cost information as well as our procedures for our current
journals.

Serials can be a mess, but you can institute some order.  Good luck!

Buddy Pennington
Acquisitions/Serials Librarian
Rockhurst University Greenlease Library
buddy.pennington@rockhurst.edu
#816-501-4143

-----Original Message-----
From: M. Lou Nesson [mailto:mlnesson@gis.net]
Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2000 4:53 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Looking for a crash course on serials management

Hello Everyone,
I recently was assigned to take over a long neglected area of serials
and periodicals at a small,  understaffed, community college library. As
a recent grad of library school I do not have much experience in this
area. Can anyone recommend good sources for a crash course (self-taught)
in the management of this area.

All suggestions are welcome.

Thanks,

M. Lou Nesson M.L.I.S.
Assistant Librarian
Massasoit Community College
One Massasoit Blvd.
Brockton, MA 02302
508-588-9100     X 1932
mlnesson@massasoit.mass.edu