Our medical library attaches barcodes to all issues we receive.  Whenever
an issue is physically removed from the shelf, we assume that it has been
"used".  Our shelvers, when they do cleanup sweeps of the library, use
portable barcode readers, and record the barcodes of all issues that have
been found off the shelves.  We dump from the portable readers and are
able to create print-outs showing which titles are used, how often, which
are active titles, etc.  These figures, along with circulation check-out
statistics, give us a fairly good idea of what are high-use titles.  This
gives us some extra ammunition when we have to consider titles for cancell
ation.
Amira Unver
Head, Serials. George Washington University Medical Center Library
amunver@gwuvm