In response to Kimberly Laird:

  At the University of Iowa (also a NOTIS library) we are in the
midst of barcoding all of our serials.  To date we have done
somewhat over 260,000 volumes using a crew of students and double
barcodes.  The students take worksheets to the stacks, apply one
barcode to a volume and the matching one to the worksheet, and
write the enum/chron information next to the barcode on the
worksheet.  Later they call up the serial record and create the
item records, filling in the enum/chron field and scanning in the
item ID (barcode number) for each one.  A Library Assistant III
proofreads their work from printouts they make of the "summ"
screens made after they complete each title.

  We decided that we wanted to barcode all our volumes and do it in
sequence as much as possible to avoid the bother of re-ordering the
item records.  This keeps the OPAC display of items charged out in a
logical order.

  As a research library of over 3 million volumes, we find that our
older materials do circulate (depending somewhat on the subject), but
that may not be as true for the smaller libraries.

                                         Ruth Christ
                                         Serials Cataloging Unit Head
                                         University of Iowa Libraries
                                         ruth-christ@uiowa.edu