We also pay for certain memberships in order to receive certain
periodicals, and usually there is no other option.  Since these are for
the benefit of library patrons and are unrelated to professional library
staff affiliations, we would continue to get these through a
subscription agent.  Your accounting department is making more work for
themselves and incurring higher costs by issuing multiple separate
checks.  I hope this is helpful.

Jennifer van Sickle
Serials Librarian & Sciences Coordinator
Trinity College Library
300 Summit St.
Hartford, CT USA 06106

jennifer.vansickle@trincoll.edu

phone: 860-297-2250
fax: 860-297-2251

-----Original Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum
[mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Linda Harding
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 3:42 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: [SERIALST] Payment of "membership" invoices

I hope that some of you will share with me how your library budgets and
pays for membership invoices.

As you well know, many "memberships" are, in reality, subscriptions to
journals.  That is, in order to receive the desired journals, you must pay
for a membership even though you will not use or even receive any other
membership benefits.  In the past we have paid for these out of our
periodicals budget.  This year our accounting department is insisting that
they be paid out of our "membership" budget.  For us, this will mean
extracting all such membership titles from our Ebsco invoice and paying
them separately.

If there are others interested in this topic you might wish to reply to
the list.  Otherwise, a response to me "offlist" is fine.

Thanks for your input.

Linda

Linda Harding
Periodicals Assistant
Elmhurst College Library
190 Prospect Ave.
Elmhurst, IL 60126