Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 16:41:36 -0400
From: "Janet L. Flowers" <jflowers@email.unc.edu>
Subject: Identifying Representative Serials for Various Readerships

I am posting this message on behalf of a colleague who does not
subscribe to this listserv.  She would be grateful for any suggestions
that anyone can offer.
Thank you.
Janet L. Flowers

"Here is my situation and my questions:

My dissertation work examines how different social groups perceive and
understand the World Wide Web in the US and I propose to analyze the
selected groups' representative periodicals in the last decade to extract
their social interpretations of the Web. The groups include librarians,
computer science person or technology developers, business person
/managers, and the general public. But I found some difficulty identifying
their 'representative' periodicals. I have used Ulrich's International
Periodical Directory to locate periodicals with high circulation, and got
confused by different kinds of circulation numbers: paid, controlled, or
free. I sorted my search results by circulation (descending), and some
journals with paid or controlled circulation are listed before other
journals with higher circ. numbers.

My questions are:
* Do the different kinds of circulation numbers carry different weight?
* What are the standard ways of evaluating the impact or importance of a
periodical?
* And what would our serials experts say are the representative
periodicals of the groups of librarians, technology developers, business
person/managers, and the general public in the US?

Thanks very much for your concerns and time!

Bin
===========================================
Bin Li
doctoral student
lib@ils.unc.edu
School of Information and Library Science
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill"

--
Janet L. Flowers
Head / Acquisitions Department
CB 3902
Davis Library
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC 27514-8890 U.S.A.

Phone:  919-962-1120
FAX:   919-962-4450
url: http://www.lib.unc.edu/acq/
<jflowers@email.unc.edu>