Date: Wednesday, June 19, 2002 10:37 AM
From: Anne Carroll Bunting [mailto:abunting@utmem.edu]
To: carol.feustel@UC.Edu,serialst@list.uvm.edu
Re: Claiming statistics? (Carol Feustel)

We have had a similar problem with Life Sciences, a weekly journal,
published by Elsevier.  We have not received any print issues since Dec
7,2001 issue which came on Dec. 20, 2001.  It is almost July 2002.  We
have claimed and claimed.  Now we have a notice from our jobber that the
publisher issued them a refund by mistake.  We don't seem to have gotten
the refund at our library and the jobber is not billing for the part we
paid them. We paid $3956.80 for this title. Now our jobber is billing us
$1090 more to reinstate the title claiming a price increase since we paid
for 2002. Now it is up to $5047.37.  It is not that much on Elsevier's
WebPages. It is only $4994.38 on our Proforma renewal for 2003.

When we first started this, our jobber told us that they could not talk
to Elsevier in New York but that all their accounts are handled through
the England office.  I even personally e-mailed the London office. The
response from Elsevier was to contact our jobber who claimed they were
getting no response.

This is definitely a candidate for non-renewal on my list. They also have
a note that if you claim "too late" you have the privilege of getting
replacement copies for 50%.  Thanks Elsevier! We have been told that on
some titles even after eight or more claims. The interesting thing is we
have had no complaints that the journal has not been coming and it
doesn't seem to have had any checkouts. There doesn't seem to be a way to
monitor if there were any online hits. That seems to be available on
Elsevier's WebPage for the last 12 months. (New month on earliest month
off) but there is a note that says it is available on Science Direct and
to ask you library to subscribe to that for back issues.

I have not named our jobber but they will recognize themselves since they
monitor this list.

Anne C. Bunting
University of Tennessee
Health Sciences Library
877 Madison Ave
Memphis, TN 38163
abunting@utmem.edu