...
>Being Canadian, we don't have to be concerned with CONSER.

                * There's nothing wrong with a vigorous waving of the
flag now and then, but I'm not so sure the justification for waving
the Canadian flag is as stated above.
                The National Library of Canada (as well as its ISSN
Canada) was a founding member of CONSER and, twenty years later, NLC
still contributes its valued serial records to the CONSER database.

>We have one record with the note:
>
>515$aIssued as a loose-leaf service with semiannual updates 1985-1993;
>issued as annual paperbound edition 1994-    .

                * Would that be one primarily monograph (loose-leaf)
record, or one primarily serial record?  If Rich V. follows this single
record recommendation, which may work just fine at the local level,
local and/or utility considerations may help determine which type of
single record is selected.
                And, if the latest serial record is a better choice
in his local situation, it may actually be just as easy to close out an
existing monograph loose-leaf record and add a new serial record for
the current annuals.
                Similarly, for a library that _already_ has catalog
records for the earliest serial as well as the succeeding loose-leaf,
it may actually be more work (transfering items and barcodes, changing
summary holdings, etc.) to combine all holdings onto a single record.
                Whether the two/three record solution is less
user-friendly than the single record solution may depend on your
current local system.  I don't think it's _inherently_ less confusing.

        David Van Hoy, Principal
           Serials Cataloger
             MIT Libraries
               dcvh@mit.
                  edu
                   =