In reply to Birdie MacLennan:

At Auburn University, the Serials Department consists of an acquisitions
work unit, a cataloging work unit and a bindery work unit.
there are subdivisions within these units, which are under a single head.
We have no periodicals room in this library and so that is not an issue.
Problems are mainly coordination, both within the department and with other
departments and branch libraries.  Example: each reference department
independently decides when to pull volumes to be bound and how many to send.
Also, it can be hard on department head to balance need to know all about
what is going on with acquisitions when there are new systems and procedures
being developed and installed in cataloging, etc.--you can get pulled in a
lot of different directions at once and some work units, like some children,
can be neglected when all seems well on the surface.  On the plus side,
with all the serials techies working together in one space, workflow
can be smoother and ideas can be exchanged more routinely as a matter of
daily work rather than as a pow-wow between departments.
Thomas Sanders, Serials, Auburn University (tsanders@auducvax)