Linda, our community college library has used Ebsco for many years and
we always treat membership subscriptions exactly like the others, and
pay for them on the same bill.  Ebsco does tag them, i.e. " /comes also
with/ American Society for Quality Membership Basic/ ", but I wasn't
able to generate an accurate list of them on Ebsconet using the listed
reports.  You might talk with your service rep.

I agree there's no point in paying them out of a different fund. What is
the reasoning for doing that?  Is the college trying to track what it is
spending on professional memberships?   On our campus I believe there
are academic departments and individuals with memberships to some or all
of the same associations/societies.  But there's no way I know of to
share that benefit with the library.  We don't use anything offered by
the membership except the subscription.  I refuse any offers from
faculty to donate journals to the library, on the basis that the library
has an ethical obligation to pay for subscriptions that support the
curriculum, even if we have to pay the higher institutional price.

Katherine H. Hill
Dry Memorial Library
Erie Community College
6205 Main St., Williamsville, NY 14221
(716) 851-1278

  ------------------------------

Date:    Wed, 3 Dec 2008 11:42:46 -0600
From:    Linda Harding <lindah@ELMHURST.EDU>
Subject: Re: Payment of "membership" invoices

Thank you very much to the half dozen or so who have responded to my query
concerning accounting practices for membership vs. periodicals
subscriptions.  The consensus is that "memberships" which are held only
for the purpose of receiving journals, should come for the periodicals or
serials budget; those which are held for the purpose of receiving other
membership benefits such as voting privileges, discounts, access to
courses, etc. should be paid from the membership budget.  An example of
this would be our membership for ALA.

We would like to go to our accounting department with some figures on how
many libraries are treating memberships in this way.  If you wouldn't
mind, please send me a message (offlist) to let me know that your library
is dealing with this problem in this way.  Thanks for Patricia Thompson
for this suggestion!

Linda

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