I concur with Sharon on this.  I am pretty new at serials management in a
public library setting, but from my brief experience, EBSCOnet is moving in
the right direction about our claiming.  Still, we have difficulty with
various publishers.

Bill Osment
Kansas City Public Library

-----Original Message-----
From: Sharon Wieczorek [mailto:swieczorek@MERCYHURST.EDU]
Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2003 12:20 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Re: What are your claiming methods?

I want to add my two cents about Ebsconet. I think they are moving in the
right direction in regards to electronic claiming. There are a few bugs or
problems with their system but the ability to claim immediately and get
results is outstanding. And if you have a unique problem, they also have
e-mail links to your service representative and I find that their turn
around with answers is fantastic.

Sharon Wieczorek
Mercyhurst College
Hammermill Library
Erie, PA 16546

Max Shenk wrote:

> Hear hear! re electronic claiming. I'm finding that it really expedites
> the claims process and also results in a higher success rate.
> At a recent periodicals interest meeting of local librarians, there was
> sort of a concensus, based on experience, that a lot of vendors don't
> really move too fast on a first claim...that, in fact, it usually isn't
> until a second claim is made that they pass the claim along to a
> publisher.
> My colleagues' experience (and mine) has also borne out, unfortunately,
> that by the time a lot of second claims are made, the publishers' grace
> periods for claiming has expired.
> All the more reason to get in a first claim as soon as possible, which
> (in our case, thanks to Ebsconet) we can do online as soon as we're
> aware that an issue is missing.
> Cheers, all!
>
> Max Shenk
> Periodicals Assistant
> Montgomery County Community College Library
> Blue Bell, PA
>
> "What is truth? I don't know, and I'm sorry I raised the point"--
> Edward Abbey
>
> >>> aew@CANES.GSW.EDU 01/16/03 09:43AM >>>
> Laura - Does your vendor have a website whereby missing issues can be
> claimed electronically--that really helped us since they do the
> claiming -
> in the past, we called the publishers to claim missing issues.
> On our electronic checkin system, a claims form can be printed out,
> but
> there again was the extra step of then having to fax it to the
> publisher.
>
> Amy
>
> At 09:17 PM 1/15/2003 -0500, you wrote:
> >Hello,
> >
> >In my frustration in dealing with journal issues that have ceased
> coming
> >without my knowledge (how can this possibly happen?), I am turning to
> the list
> >for advice.
> >
> >In the 10 years that I have been managing our serials collection, I
> am
> >constantly frustrated by late issues that fall through the cracks.  I
> check in
> >issues using a DRA system.  It has claiming capabilities but I have
> never been
> >pleased with the reports I get.  It often doesn't pick up issues that
> need to
> >be claimed (due to a deviation factor that is set up in the system
> that lets
> >you know when you should expect the next issue.)  It also sticks a
> bunch of
> >issues on the report that don't need to be claimed (see deviation
> note,
> >previous sentence!)
> >
> >I am curious as to the methods other schools use to track late or
> never
> >received issues?  Does your system have reporting capabilities and do
> you run
> >these reports every week or month?  Do you have some manual way of
> keeping
> >track?  Any and all input, advice, etc. would be welcome.
> >
> >With the divine fiasco that is going on (we had 95% of our
> subscriptions with
> >them - over 750 titles), this claiming issue is becoming even more of
> a
> >challenge!
> >
> >Regards,
> >Laura
> >
> >Laura Vogler
> >Serials Manager
> >Wabash College Library
> >301 West Wabash Avenue
> >Crawfordsville IN 47933