While I enjoy and learn from the discussion of serials problems at large
colleges, are there any librarians out there at two year colleges and small
four year institutions that would like to share experiences and problems?

I am a librarian at a two year agricultural and technical college in rural
upstate New York.  We have an enrollement of 3000 FTEs.  We presently are
subscribing to 550 journals and 15 newspapers.  The serials collection is just
one of my responsibilities. We do manual checkin and claiming.  We use READMORE
as our vendor and UMI for microfilm.  I have one clerk that does checkin,
bindery, mail, and many other chores.

One  major problem we have is getting claims done fast enough.  Many
publishers will not retain back issues beyond a month or two.  This is
especially true for those that use subscription agents such as NEODATA.  I get
sick of those little white post cards saying our subscription will be extended
because the issues are no longer available.  I used to do our claiming via
READMORE's online system ROSS but have now changed to faxing in claims because
it takes less time and response time from READMORE seems to be better.

Another major problem we have is magazines disappearing off shelves or getting
slit.  We do not have the space or personnel to have closed stacks. We put a
security strip in every magazine that we keep.  How are other campuses handling
that problem?

Thank you for your time.

Wilfred Drew (Call me "Bill")   Serials/Ref./Systems Librarian & CYBERNAUT
State University of New York  College of Agriculture and Technology
P.O. Box 902;  Morrisville, NY 13408-0902
BITNET: DREWWE@SNYMORVA Internet: DREWWE@SNYMORVA.CS.SNYMOR.EDU
Phone: (315)684-6055 or 684-6060  Fax: (315)684-6115
Any opinions expressed here are mine and are subject to change without notice.