Date: Wed, 10 Sep 1997 13:44:18 +0600
From: Frieda Rosenberg <friedat@EMAIL.UNC.EDU>
Subject: Re: "Journal monographs"

Dear fellow serialists:

We have noticed for years that a good portion of our new serial cataloging
originates as firm orders.  As the practice of giving distinctive titles
to issues continues to increase, we are finding more and more of these are
being ordered as monographs, and then sent from the monographic cataloging
areas to us for a decision whether to catalog as serials or monographs.
(Many have serial copy in OCLC but no monographic copy.) Concurrently,
when we do subscribe, the bibliographers are pulling some theme issues out
of the run and sending them for analysis.

In response to a question about this, our bibliographers replied in part:

" as money becomes tighter I expect that the the trend of the last
serveral of placing fewer and fewer paid subscriptions will continue,
while the concomitant purchase of individual journal monogarphs will
increase. "

I wonder if some of these trends are common to other libraries besides
ours? (We may be just oddballs.)  And what are you doing about giving
access to these issues? Does anyone have a workable policy?

For the firm orders, we came up with the solution of a local authority
record indicating our preferred treatment as monographs until a
subscription is entered or issues without a distinctive title are
received. We enter a monographic record for each issue title into OCLC for
our use and that of others. For the requested analytics, we simply comply
with the request. We can't help noticing, however, that the titles of the
resulting monographs, however striking, are very general, and the
records get only broad subject headings because of the diversity of the
articles.  If we are analyzing selective issues, the only value we are
adding is a contents note detailing the articles; similar collections of
articles are not being so detailed.

Any thoughts on this phenomenon, colleagues? I would be glad to summarize
your opinions for the list if there is interest.

-Regards, Frieda
-----------------
Frieda Rosenberg
Serials Cataloging
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
friedat@email.unc.edu