Date: 06 Dec 1993 09:07:25 -0500 (EST)
From: "Kate Herzog, Univ. at Buffalo" <UNLKH@UBVM.BITNET>
Subject: RE: RAND publications

On Thu, 2 Dec 1993 16:41:01 EDT Kevin M Randall said:

Northwestern, like many other libraries, receives the Rand report
series on deposit.  One man's tech report is another man's monograph.
Some are gold; some are base metal.  Therefore, the answers to
Kevin's questions lie in Northwestern's collection development
policy toward tech reports in general, the library's treatment of
other tr series, and upon the needs of the library's users.
>
>Some issues are:
>
>1.  Selection (shall we keep all or only some of the pieces we
>receive?)
Have you kept all of the pieces up to now?  Do you have any sense
of their use?  Rand research is multidisciplinary, to say the least.
Are all the reports going to be housed in one library?  Or would
you send them to different libraries, depending on their subject?
Obviously, Rand offers these series on deposit with the
expectation that the pieces will be kept and made available to
patrons who need them.  This is not an inexpensive venture on
their part.  And, your decision about keeping the series
together and in one place is related to a decision to keep all
of the pieces or some of them.
>
>2.  Cataloging (shall the pieces in a series be classed together
>or separately?  if together, shall the monographs be analyzed?)
>(nearly all of the serial and monograph titles appear to be on
>OCLC, so the issues are staff processing time and patron access,
>not the availability of copy)
This is where my "one man's tr is another man's monograph" idea comes
from.  If you assume that there is good access to the content of these
series via indexes (by the way, Rand also supplies _Selected Rand
abstracts_ to you free of charge, which indexes the reports you have
in that collection.)  How do you treat other tech report series?
Open entry, serial cataloging assumes a complete (or almost complete)
run.  I'm sure there are other "monographic" series which you treat this
way.  However, with the advent of bibliographic utilities and contributed
cataloging, more and more access (author, title, and subject) to individual
tr's has become prevalent.  It is still less expensive to catalog the
set serially, one time, and to bind it serially than to catalog and bind
each piece separately.  However, since the users are consulting paper
indices less and less frequently, use of grey literature like the
Rand reports is improved by providing analytics in an OPAC.

In addition, as Kevin indicates, there are numerous series.  And, if I
am not mistaken, some numbers might have limited/classified distribution
as per the governmental sponsor's decision.  Therefore, it is highly
possible/probable that you cannot have a complete run of any of these,
which makes serial treatment all the more difficult from the holdings
statement perspective.
>
>3.  Binding (shall the pieces in a series be bound together?
>shall they be pamphlet bound separately?  shall they be hardbound
>separately?  shall they be shelved unbound?)

The binding decision is driven by the cataloging decision which is
driven by the retention/collection decision.  You can really only
bind the series together if you have treated them serially, open
entry.  If you class them together and analyze them, you should
probably at least pamphlet bind them as a preservation treatment.
And, if you class them separately, you should bind them as you
would other ephemeral materials which are cataloged for the
monograph collection.
>
>I would be very interested in hearing what other libraries that
>receive these things are doing--or not doing!--with them.

You will find, depending on who responds, that there is no best
way to deal with Rand, or other major tech report series.  I, for
one, would be interested in knowing how you eventually decide to
go.

Kate S. Herzog, Director
Science and Engineering Library
University at Buffalo
unlkh@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu