This message is being cross-posted to lists ARCHIVES and SERIALST.

I worked for three years on a retrospective serials cataloging project for
the Tamiment Library, a special colection in New York University Libraries.
Part of Tamiment was the Wagner Labor Archives, which collected extensive
archival collections. Tamiment also acquired commercially published micro-
film of archival collections.

Most of these archival collections contained serials of various types, with
varying degrees of completeness. On the one hand, some collections contained
complete runs of a journal and scattered issues of party bulletins or union
newspapers (and yes, we cataloged them as type "p" not "n", following the
CONSER definition of a newspaper). Usually, these serials constituted the
serials portion of a person's or organization's private collection.

We would often get into a tug of war over where these materials were to be
housed. In the library we had many scattered runs of union newspapers; the
serials cataloger (me) had a desk near enough to the archives processing
tables to notice on many occasions that issues of periodicals found in the
boxes nicely rounded out a run so it was complete enough to consider filming.

We tried various approaches. The processors would verify the publications
in standard labor/left reference guides and would check the library's kardex.
However, the title changes, splits, mergers with other serials, which were
easy for a serials cataloger to detect were a problem for the processors.
One time I even tried to explain that what we had in a particular situation
was a title change, even though the title didn't change; the periodical
carried a uniform title with corporate body qualifier, and, the name of
the corporate body "local" did not change, but the name of the "international"
changed. I almost got punched in the mouth! (Please, I'm exaggerating).

The reason I cross-posted this message is that I'm sure there are librarians
and archivists who've been in the same situation. The way we handled it was
to let each other know what we were working on. I struck a bargain with
the archivists; if they would call me over to have me untangle a serial,
and help me merge it into the library holdings and get it logged in right,
I would teach them how to establish names of corporate bodies for the AMC
records they were preparing.

My question is this: is there any standard or policy for situations like
this? I'm sure those of us that work in historical societies and other
combination library/archives may know. I'd also like to hear experiences.
How do people deal with this problem?

Rick Gildemeister
Cataloger/OCLC Enhance Coordinator
Lehman College of the City University of New York