In response to Jean Farrington's inquiry/comment regarding Haworth's
consolidated invoice:

Many of Haworth's periodical titles are, indeed, very s-l-o-w.  We are
most appreciative when our vendors are aware of this situation, note it on
our renewal or supplemental invoices as "no charge"/ "slow bill-later", and
hold off on billing us until issues are actually being published.  (We are
often times the source of the information that a particular title is very
irregular or slow and, based on our check-in information, we inform our
vendors, asking them to hold back on invoicing us, especially in a situation
where the vendor is unaware, for whatever reasons, that the payments are a
year or more ahead of the latest receipts.) Vendors are as reliant as we are,
if not more so, on effective channels of communication with publishers.

How would we avoid duplicate payments to Haworth and our vendor-of-record?
Our procedures are not always fail-safe, of course, but we check every invoice
we receive against our on-line serial and accounting records. As one of the 1st
steps in our invoice processing procedures, the source of the invoice rec'd.
is checked against the source of our subscription. If our subscription is rec'd
thru a vendor and the invoice is from the publisher (and if it can be further
identified as a true invoice and not just a renewal notice), and the invoice
would be entered into our system with a "no-pay" status with a note to explain
the situation in case a statement or questions arose later. Whether or not the
invoice would be sent to our vendor account rep. would depend on the unique-
ness or severity of the situation.  If we'd not yet been billed by the vendor
and our records reflected that we should have, we'd definitely send the invoice
to our vendor account rep. As described, the Haworth invoice situation would
be an example of a unique enough situation to warrant our sending at least a
copy of it on to our vendor account rep. as "current awareness" information.

Although I wasn't aware of the Haworth invoice specifically, I am aware that
there has been a noticeable increase in creative, confound-the-customer, and
even cold-call marketing techniques being used by publishers this year. I
have personally fielded calls from sales & marketing reps. who seem to be
looking for THE person who can authorize an instantaneous order for a new title
or product or add'l. copies of titles/products to which we currently subscribe.
And some of the approaches have been so oblique that the uninitiated may have
agreed to additional charges, publications, or products without knowing what
was actually being transacted.

Thanks, Jean, for helping to make us even more aware of a situation that may
become even more pronounced and permanent as publishers make their push to be
sole sources again. (Alliteration totally unintentional.)

E. Gaele Gillespie / Asst. Head, Serials    Univ. of Kansas Libraries
(913)864-3535    e-mail: GGILLESP@UKANVM