Chris: how true.  The amount of time spent here figuring out changes in
publication patterns is quite staggering.  Since I have been monitoring
Carolyn's "problem tray" I see up to 6 issues a day.  Gloria

Rick Anderson wrote:

>>But how much time is
>>actually saved by not "checking in" the issue once the record
>>is on the screen?
>>
>>
>
>A substantial amount, since routine check-in was much more than a simple
>matter of looking up the title and clicking on a box.  It meant
>monitoring and registering changes in publication patterns (surely one
>of the most useless pieces of information ever doggedly pursued by a
>library staff), watching for issues that arrived out of order, etc.  The
>primary time savings comes not from changes in the students' practices,
>but from changes in staff practices.  We used to have a full-time
>serials clerk who spent the majority of her time trying to resolve
>problems that arose in the check-in process -- figuring out whether a
>journal had really changed publication interval or pattern, nailing down
>title changes, following up on issues that came out of order, training
>students in the arcana of check-in practice and reviewing the students'
>work, etc.  Because we no longer worry much about those things, the
>person in this position now has time to do things that really have an
>impact on our patrons' access to journal content: registering online
>access, following up on access problems, providing the Catalog
>department with needed information about online journals for the OPAC,
>like that.  Of course, we've also saved hundreds of hours in routine
>claiming (another activity that, in most cases, is both unnecessary and
>ineffective).
>
>But it's much more than just a time issue.  We've also saved thousands
>of dollars in binding costs, since we now put older issues in boxes
>instead of binding them.
>
>----
>Rick Anderson
>Dir. of Resource Acquisition
>University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
>(775) 784-6500 x273
>rickand@unr.edu

--
Gloria A. Dingwall
Manager, Serial Acquisitions
University of Calgary Library
Telephone: [403] 220-3325
Email: gadingwa@ucalgary.ca
Fax:  [403] 284-2109