I would add to the prior comments that Haworth is not alone in a) direct
billing for titles purchased through vendors or b) delaying publications
but continuing to bill regularly, thus creating (if possible) a situation
where the library may be twoor more years ahead in payments.  A large
percentage of the titles we buy through vendors also result in our getting
renewal notices and bills through the mail--often down to third notices and
final notices for items which the vendor claims to have paid months ago.
Then it comes down to who you believe most.  (Also to a lot of frantic
telephone calls.)  We coul d save considerable staff time if we didn't have
to cope this this flood of false invoices, but the publishers claim it is too
difficult to write and install the simple computer programs which would
distinguish between recipient-paid and vendor-paid subscritptions.  (for the
small guys, this may be true).  Just as it is too expensive to clean mailing
lists, so that we end up getting 20-30 copies of the same ad in the same days
mail.

I think most of us are familiar with at least one well known publkisher,
now infiltrating the Russian publishing scene, who frequently bill years
ahead of publication.  I sus  suppose that this one source of their great
profits.And we have had a great deal of problems with a vendor other than
Faxon--Stevens and Brown--in the past few years, in terms of our paying
in the autumn and reaching the first of the year and the publishing house
claiming not to have been paid and refusing to supply.  We've even had long
distance telephone calls from English publishers about this.  We have also
had an increase lately in the problem of our not being billed for renewals,
most often by publishers but sometimes by certain less-autoimated vendors,
and our failing to catch this because we have not got an action date set on
NOTIS for "EXPECT BILL".

I am afraid this is all part of doing business.  We are suspicious of every
incoming invoice until it has proved out, but we still get caught sometimes
by new vendors we haven't dealt with suddenly contacting us and asking
payment as the only N.A. source (only  to later get a bill from our overseas
source), having journals sold from one publisher to abo  another and having
the new publisher claim ourname is not on the list of subscribers (even
though we can prove we paid,we may never get soeme of the issues), paying
for titles that are "delayed" only to see no further issues published, etc.
The publishers and vendors have to deal with the problems we cause, the
strange billing requirements some of our administrations require, etc., so
I suppose it may even out in the end, but i t can be frustrating, especially
when you have a patron standing at your desk and totally failing to understand
why you, the librarian he/she looks down on but relies on (like the fast-food
help) has failed to produce an issue he/she knows for a fact has been
received at another library where his/her fi  firend does research.  After all
these years I have still not figured out how some people get the cheek to
ads disguised as renewal notices, ads which promise faculty members discounts
on personal subscriptions if they pressure the library into subscribing at a
vastly inflated institutional rate (We'll drop your subscription cost from
$40 to $35 if you convince your library to shell out $210 a year for an
institutional subscription no one has requested in our 17 years of
publication), etc.  I guess that is why I am in the public sector, rather
than the private.

Thomas Sanders, Serials, Auburn University, AL (tsanders@auducvax)