When that article was published, a couple of us here at RAL read it with
great interest. We had just spent 3 months converting over 1700
periodicals from Kardex check-in (manual) to computerized check-in using
Siri Unicorn.

We waited for a bit, though, to see what would happen with claming.
Unicorn has a module that can pull and run reports for "missed issues." I
look through this several times a month to see what titles need to be
claimed versus what titles just need some cleanup work done (e.g. we
received a combined issue for #3/4 and the students made a new issue
instead of combining the two already predicted). After going through this
'weeding' process, though, I still need to claim anywhere from 50-125
issues per month. This would still be a large number of issues to miss if
we stopped checking in those items.

We would only know if we missed those issues if a patron came looking for
them and the issue was not on shelf. However, sometimes items are received
and then disappear, so that would not be a good reason to claim the item.
Besides the fact that a lot of publishers have strict claim restrictions
(i.e. you have to claim an issue 3 months within its cover chronology or
you will have to pay for a new issue).

I guess I would take a good look at what type or serials you have before I
would go down the no-check-in path. If they are mostly dailies or
weeklies, I suppose it would be no big deal to miss one or two issues. But
if you have a collection like ours with over 1600 print titles, a good
deal of which are scholarly publications, I think I would stay with
checking-in just to be sure the issues are received.

Good luck in whatever you decide.

Deb Ham
Serials Specialist
Reinert Alumni Memorial Library
Creighton University
2500 California Plaza
Omaha, NE 68178

dldham@creighton.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum
[mailto:SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU] On Behalf Of Cynthia Hsieh
Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2004 4:23 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: [SERIALST] dropping serial check-in?

Hi,

I wondered how many of you have dropped checking in serials?  Do you dropped
all the check-ins or just selected types of serials? What are the pros and
cons of this practice?

After reading an article about the practice at Univ. of Nevada- Las Vegas,
our library administration strongly encourages our library to drop checking
all the serials.

I feel comfortable to drop checking in weekly magazines, daily newspapers,
and periodicals with online access; however, I am a little skeptical about
expensive  periodical titles.  I am not sure if it will create more work by
just dropping check-ins for selected titles since a new sorting procedure is
needed.

Any advices are greatly appreciated.

Cynthia

Cynthia Hsieh
Head of Technical Services/Assistant Professor University Library University
of the Pacific
3601 Pacific Ave.
Stockton, CA 95211
Tel: 209-946-2571
chsieh@pacific.edu