Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 08:37:43 EDT
From: Bill Cohen <BCohen7719@aol.com>
Subject: Re: Claiming statistics?

Dear Rick:

I can supply some "informal estimates" from the "other end" (that of the
Publisher), but regretfully we have not to date kept careful logs
or statistics on this:

1) Accidental lost or non-receipt of missing issues appear to be
    cleared up after receipt of a 1st claim about 80% of the time;

2) Because of unintentional mishaps--and most of these appear to
    be caused by either unclear overseas addresses in foreign
    languages, or inaccurate bibliographic references, a 2nd claim
    is received, and these seem to resolve the situation in a remaining
    15% of the cases;

3) In about 5% of the cases, a claim is not cleared up on a complimentary
    basis because the requester is not actually a subscriber (professionals
    in disciplines other than librarianship sometimes know that
    "claiming" is one way to retrieve a complimentary 'desk copy' of
    a single current journal issue that they would let to get), or the
    period of time involved is alarmingly old (15 or 20 years ago).

Again, these are not hard facts, and I would ask readers not to cite
these very rough "guestimates" as hard data.    It really DOES help
to receive a 2nd or 3rd claim, however, because sometimes an
inaction is caused by changing staff or staff vacations, and the
Publisher's workstations are not "shared stations."    A small "tip"
which experienced librarians probabl all know already:  providing proof
of payment with the first claim will almost always speed up the
process considerably.

With kind regards,

Bill Cohen, Publisher
The Haworth Press, Inc.
10 Alice Street
Binghamton, New York 13904
http://www.haworthpress.com/
<BCohen7719@aol.com>

In a message dated 6/12/02 1:02:15 PM, rickand@UNR.EDU writes:

<< An appeal to the Collective Wisdom:

I've been told that someone, somewhere once did a study of claiming
effectiveness and came up with a set of numbers that indicates how many
times a first claim results in the actual receipt of a missing issue, how
many times a second claim succeeds where the first one failed, etc.  But if
such a study exists I can't seem to find it.  Can anyone either point me
towards that study (or one like it) or share the results of any internal
studies they might have done?

I'm less interested in how long it takes to get results from claiming than I
am in the ultimate effectiveness of the process.

Thanks in advance for any help.  If respondents wish to contact me off-list,
I'll happily summarize for the group.

-------------
Rick Anderson
Director of Resource Acquisition
The University Libraries
University of Nevada, Reno      "I'm not against the modern
1664 No. Virginia St.            world.  I just don't think
Reno, NV  89557                  everything's for sale."
PH  (775) 784-6500 x273             -- Elvis Costello
FX  (775) 784-1328
rickand@unr.edu