Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2001 12:18:14 -0700
From: Shirley Rais <srais@LLU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Issue arrival times (Dani Lichtenberg)

Dani:  I've worked in medical libraries for years and have observed (and
confirmed with other medical librarians) that individual subscriptions for the
physicians, nurses, etc. seem to come before institutional subscriptions.  I
don't believe it has anything to do with the vendor but with the publisher's
mailing patterns.

Shirley Rais
Serials Department
Loma Linda Univ. & Medical Center

> Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 17:17:44 -0400
> From: Dani Lichtenberg <p005386b@pb.seflin.org>
> Subject: Arrival times
>
> I would very much appreciate hearing some discussion about arrival dates
> for subscriptions received via such services as EBSCO.
>
> One patron is adamant that our subscriptions arrive significantly later
> than those of individual subscribers.  There are certain scholarly
> journals (as we've been discussing recently) that simply are produced
> later than they are supposed to be.  But he is refering to regular
> commercial magazines.  I know the ones that I like to read seem arrive in
> my branch right around the same time that I see them on the newsstands or
> in my own mailbox.  But my patron is complaining about financial magazines
> such as Smart Money and Fortune.  Can it be that Newsweek and Vogue come
> in right on time, but the inscrutable EBSCO gods send the financial
> magazines in late just to bedevil would be investors?
>
> Does this patron have a valid complaint?  He is sure that "his" magazines
> are being sent to a warehouse somewhere and that they just sit there until
> they are yesterday's news and that then and only then are they sent to our
> library.
>
> Does anyone have any feelings about this theory one way or another?  Are
> institutional subscriptions handled differently than individual
> subscriptions?  A slower postage rate, perhaps?  A different distribution
> system?
>
> Thanks for your help,
> Dani Lichtenberg
> Palm Beach County Library System
>
> p005386b@pb.seflin.org