In a very recent reorganization, I found myself as head of serials and govern-
ment documents processing.  I can, and have been handling serials for many
years, but gov.docs processing is pretty new to me. I know there is a GOVDOCS
listserv out there, but before I sign up and get inundated, I thought I
would turn to the group of librarians I have been working with all these
years for help and advice.  To many of you, processing Gov.Docs may be
all in a day's work but I have never had this as part of my serials routine
so am a bit daunted about where to start.

WE do get MARCIVE records tape loaded into our database, but use no other
services for docs. processing. In addition, we only have the records
loaded: we do nothing more than check the monographs against the database
and serial records, well, no one until now has given them much thought.
Furthermore, we are about to migrate to another system from NOTIS so are
not interested in doing any on-line checkin with NOTIS due to the
forthcoming migration.

My mandate is to streamline the processing as much as possible.
At this point, I am interested in exploring the MARCIVE Shipping List Service
(SLS) for labels and shelf-list records.  Would anyone care to comment about
these two services?  Do they really save time? Are these worth exploring?
Any caveats on either/both services?

I am only too aware of the problems that are beginning to rear their ugly
little heads due to the MARCIVE tape loaded records: nothing against the
MARCIVE records, just the nature of the beast. Is it better to do nothing
different right now but to jump right into  the SLS barcodes service
after we have migrated, providing the SLS barcoding service is valuable.
Do I sound like I do not know left from right? I appreciate any/all thoughts...

****************************************************************************
Helen M. Aiello, Serials Librarian
Wesleyan University, Olin Library
Middletown, CT 06457
Bitnet: HAIELLO@Wesleyan.Bitnet
Internet: HAIELLO@Wesleyan.EDU
Tel and Voice Mail: 203-685-3828
FAX: 203-685-2661