I'm going to stay faithful to my promise not to engage in this argument
on-list, but I do want to remind everyone that we're the University of
Nevada, Reno -- not Las Vegas.

I'll also point out that our number of print journal subscriptions was
probably about average for a medium-sized land grant institution, and
that answers to most of Mary's concerns below can be found in the
article.

----
Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
(775) 784-6500 x273
rickand@unr.edu

> -----Original Message-----
> From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum
> [mailto:SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU] On Behalf Of Mary Grenci
> Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2004 10:06 AM
> To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
> Subject: Re: [SERIALST] dropping serial check-in?
>
> If I'm correctly remembering the workshop I attended awhile
> ago, the Univ.
> of Nevada-Las Vegas has very few print subscriptions compared to other
> institutions its size. They rely much more on online
> subscriptions which
> (again, if I'm remembering correctly) are checked in. They stopped
> check-in of print so they could concentrate on check-in and other
> management actitivites for the largest and most expensive
> part of their
> periodical collection: the online subs. Also, I think
> check-in of print
> was taking much more time than it should have, much more than
> it usually
> does at other institutions, and this was one way around that problem.
>
> As for my thoughts on eliminating serial check-in:
>
> * If we rely on everybody in the serials chain remaining
> honest, you must
> still consider all the issues that don't arrive and that currently are
> claimed. How many broken runs would you have? Do you care?
> Would you still
> expect to claim things, just at a later date? Not realistic, I think.
>
> * If we consider human nature might eventually take over,
> what's to stop a
> publisher or vendor from simply never sending a few issues
> here and there,
> knowing you won't notice until it's too late and that even
> then you won't
> be sure it wasn't rec'd? On the other side of the coin, how
> could vendors
> be confident that the claims that do come in are valid? They
> will know the
> library trend is to not check things in, so they will know you have no
> idea whether something was received. Can we really expect
> them to continue
> to provide claimed issues in that environment? I think not.
>
> Granted, I don't think dishonesty and a lack of mutual trust
> would be an
> immediate problem.  The current environment of honesty and mutual
> trust has built up over a number of years and won't
> immediately go out the
> window. I can see it happening in the future, though.
>
> * If it's wanted enough that you pay for it, you should make
> sure you get
> what you pay for. (Gift subs. are another matter and could be
> considered
> separately. Perhaps this is a category where eliminating
> check-in wouldn't
> have dire consequences.) If you don't care enough to make sure you get
> your money's worth, stop buying it altogether.
>
> * If you do drop check-in of some or all of your print collection, you
> should also drop all claiming of those titles.
>
> * If the unthinkable happens and this becomes a wider trend,
> don't expect
> vendors/publishers to change their claiming policies just because
> libraries have tried to streamline. That would just be translating
> our savings into added costs for them. It would be unfair to them and
> would, in any case, result in higher subscription costs for libraries.
>
> Mary Grenci
> Serials Team Leader & Metadata Librarian
> Metada & Digital Library Services
> University of Oregon Libraries
> mgrenci@darkwing.uoregon.edu
>