Hi all,

I've been doing these for a few years now and keep wrestling with a
number of items.  I'd like to get a sense of how others are handling
these items since the statistics don't do much good if folks are not
counting things consistently.  Any guidance or help would be much
appreciated!

1.  How to identify "current" titles in collections.  We could fairly
easily go through JSTOR and Project MUSE and identify the current
titles.  However, we also have ACM Digital Library (411 titles),
American Chemical Society (35 titles), IEEE (3,976 titles), SpringerLINK
(1,297 titles), and Wiley (560 titles).  We are also very close to
getting ScienceDirect Freedom Collection (1,839).  With such a large
number of titles, it is impractical for us to sift through to find the
current and noncurrent titles.  We have been counting all titles as
current titles for the ALS statistics.

2.  Duplication.  There is also the issue of duplication, though this is
not a large one if you are not including titles in databases.  However,
you could still have duplication if you subscribe to a title that is
also available in JSTOR, etc.  Do folks take the time to dedupe or do
you count them as separate titles?  We have been using Serials Solutions
to dedupe when we can.

3.  Titles in databases? Are people including titles found in databases
like Academic Search Premier?  You can read the definition as pointing
to publisher collections (those generally considered complete, stable FT
versus the instability we often find in databases), but does not
explicitly prohibit database titles.  If you count them, then the issue
in #1 really scales up to unrealistic levels.  And if you don't count
them then aren't we excluding a pretty big part of our collection that
attracts a huge percentage of our serials usage?

Again, any help with this would be very useful.  We do the best we can
but I don't feel like we should be spending huge amounts of staff time
trying to be as accurate as possible when we do not have clear
definitions of what to include and not include.  How can you compare
current serial titles if library A is including FT databases while
library B is not or if Library A counts all JSTOR titles as current
while Library B excludes the entire collection?

Buddy Pennington
Serial Acquisitions Librarian
University of Missouri - Kansas City
University Libraries
800 East 51st Street
Kansas City, MO  64110
816-235-1548
816-333-5584 (fax)
penningtonb@umkc.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum
[mailto:SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU] On Behalf Of Patricia Thompson
Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2007 5:11 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Re: [SERIALST] Are Journals in JSTOR Current Serials?

We do. But only the current ones. Some are not current. There are
different collections within JSTOR and depending on which ones you
have subscribed to, you would have different numbers of titles. We
regard these as online subscriptions to individual journal titles.
Same with Project Muse.
Pat Thompson

At 04:18 PM 8/22/2007, you wrote:
>Line 26 of the Academic Libraries Survey asks for the number of
>current serial titles held at the end of the Fiscal Year. The
>instructions for line 26 read:
>
>Part D - Library Collections
>Current serial titles (line 26) - Report the total number of titles
>in all formats. If the title comes in
>both paper and electronic form, count it twice. Count each
>individual title if it is received as part
>of a publisher's package. Include paper and microfilm government
>documents issued serially if
>they are accessible through the library's catalog. Report indexing
>and abstracting services that
>may contain full-text in line 27.
>
>Do any libraries count JSTOR journals as current serial titles?
>
>Dennis Gibbons
>Collection Development Librarian
>Texas Christian University       Phone: 817-257-7312
>TCU Box 298400                    Fax:     817-257-7282
>Fort Worth, TX 76129              E-mail: d.gibbons@tcu.edu

Patricia Thompson
Assistant University Librarian for Resource Management Services
Jessie Ball duPont Library
The University of the South
Sewanee, TN 37383
Phone: 931-598-1657
Email: pthompso@sewanee.edu