Greetings!  Could you help us with a serials problem?  At Indiana
        State University, we're in the process of creating NOTIS item
        records for all of our bound periodicals with the ultimate intent
        of circulating them.  Among the challenges we've encounted is one
        presented by National Sheriff.  This periodical ran into sloppy
        numbering practices in the middle 1980s.  Specifically, issues
        number 3 through 6 of Volume 37 have been misnumbered as Vol. 36.
        Vol. 38, no. 1 is fine, but Vol. 38, nos. 2-6 are all misnumbered
        as Vol. 37.  What should have been Vol. 39 is consistently mis-
        numbered as Vol. 38.  The first two issues of Vol. 40 are misnum-
        bered as Vol. 39, but with issue no. 3, someone apparently caught
        the mistake and made it Vol. 40 (complete with a little note on
        the t.p. explaining that nos. 1 and 2 should have been labelled
        Vol. 40.)

        Just for fun, I did a quick database search in the Criminal
        Justice Periodicals Index on Dialog and discovered that the only
        citations to the journal during the affected period followed the
        mislabelling, referring to issues in Vol. 38 as Vol. 37.

        So... any suggestions on how to arrange an item record which will
        provide a designation to a unique issue without confusing any
        patrons who are tracking down citations?  We're leaning toward
        making the date our point of difference, but we'd be interested
        in any other ideas!

        Thanks very much for any assistance you can render!

        Steve Hardin
        Reference/Technical Services Librarian
        Cunningham Memorial Library
        Indiana State University
        Terre Haute, IN  47809
        BITNET: LIBHARD@INDST
        Voice: 812/237-7685
        FAX: 812/237-2567