Barb:

I will answer your note off-list.   Many, many
thanks for writing!    The lateness problem with
Science & Technology Libraries should be corrected
by the next mid-volume period of time.

Bill Cohen, /Publisher & Editor-in-Chief/
The Haworth Press, Inc.
www.HaworthPress.com

Dietsch.Barbara@EPAMAIL.EPA.GOV wrote:
> Bill,
>
> We have had serious problems in the past with our subscription to the
> quarterly Science & Technology Libraries.  Since 2001, when we began our
> subscription to this title, we have faithfully paid our subscription
> vendor each year for a complete year of S&TL.
>
> Our problems began when the title became (was?) seriously behind in
> publication.  This was confounded by the aspect that the publication
> dates on the journal webpages at the time didn't reflect the actual
> journal cover dates.  This made it very difficult to track down where
> the problem was when we did not receive our issues in 2003 and 2004.  We
> are still missing volumes 22 and 23.
>
> Looking through my records, our EBSCO invoice for 2003 has good detail.
> It says that the payment in 2003 will be applied for volume 21 (pub.
> dates 2001-2002).  Then the next year in 2004, our Basch invoice (which
> had no details), charged us one year's subscription rate, but has the
> "Period" listed as 01/01/2004-12/31/2004.  So begins the problem.  The
> title is behind schedule and when Haworth is paid in 2004, they apply
> the payment towards volume 24 (pub dates 2003-2004).  We now have a gap
> of two volumes although we have paid for a year's subscription every
> year since 2001.
>
> The problem arises when the publisher of a quarterly that normally
> publishes one volume per year tries to "catch up" and publishes two
> extra volumes in a year.  I don't think most subscription vendors are
> going to pay out of pocket to cover Haworth printing two extra volumes
> in a year to fix what is a publisher problem.
>
> Here are the holdings for UNC-Chapel Hill from their online catalog:
>
> v.19 (2000-01)
> v.20 (2001)
> v.21 (2001)
> v.22 (2001-02)
> v.23 (2002)
> v.24 (2003-04)
> v.25 (2004-05)
>
> Notice that recently the publication schedule seems more current
> although we have not received any 2006 issues although it is September.
>
> I probably wouldn't be going to such lengths to detail our problems with
> S&TL in this forum, but when I called Haworth Press customer service to
> try to work out this problem, I was told that we had only paid for one
> volume for that year.
>
> When Haworth did this, a lot of libraries were actually penalized.  When
> I tried to explain to the customer service representative that we
> couldn't just "come up" with 2 extra "years" of subscription money, she
> didn't quite understand the concept.  It was very frustrating and to
> think that it was a library journal in which I had spent hours trying
> figure out the problem and to obtain the missing
> issues.............despite our paying for a subscription each year.
>
> Another thought, if late publication schedules are beyond control, can
> you provide instructions to your billing and customer service staff on
> how to prevent the problems I encountered?  Perhaps working more
> proactively with the subscription agents?  The vendors are under the
> same assumption in that a quarterly generally only has one volume per
> year.
>
> Enough said.  I know I'm a bit verbose, but I felt you should know how
> being excessively late and also publishing more than one volume (for a
> quarterly) per year affects your customers.
>
> barb
>
> barb dietsch | serials coordinator
> epa library | unc contract staff
> 109 tw alexander drive | mail code c267-01
> research triangle park, nc 27711
> phone: 919.541.0726
> fax: 919.541.1405
> dietsch.barbara@epa.gov
>