In response to Bill Cohen's question--
>Does anyone know what % of libraries use bar code
>scanning for serials check-in work?    Haworth's journals are
>all bar-coded for swiping a "wand" over the backcover.    Is
>bar-code swiping not very common in libraries?

The barcode Mr. Cohen refers to on Haworth Press journals is in SICI
(Serial Item and Contribution Identifier) format, described at
http://www.issn.org:8080/pub/faqs/identifiers/print_en.

I don't know a percentage. I can't speak for all libraries, of course,
but too few publishers have adopted the practice of adding SICI barcodes
on the back covers of issues to rely on them for check-in. Using SICI to
identify issues was and is a great idea, but it's not widely adopted in
the disciplines collected in my library (mostly liberal arts and
education, relatively few STM titles). Paying for a barcode scanner at
the check-in area and training workers isn't worth it for us, since only
a minority of our subscriptions have the barcodes.

An analogue to SICI for online is DOI (Digital Object Identifier). It's
a great way to facilitate linking, but it won't work very well in
practice until all (or almost all) publishers adopt it. Extensive info
about DOI may be found at www.crossref.org.

Steve Black
Reference, Serials, and Instruction Librarian The College of Saint Rose
392 Western Avenue
Albany, NY 12203-1419
blacks@strose.edu
(518)458-5494