---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 10:49:17 -0700
From: Cory Meyer <cmeyer@BIBLIO.UNM.EDU>
Subject: Postal Service & Claiming

To add to the discussion......

A few years ago our library changed it's name from UNM Medical Center
Library to UNM Health Sciences Center Library.  We notified our
subscription vendors and they contacted the publishers to inform them of
our name change.

Shortly thereafter the Postal service changed their regulations and
required the addition of a "street" address to all labels.  That proved a
problem for us since we are not located on a street...but within the
campus environs.  When publishers started to deny our claims, we were told
that a street address was required by <their> postal branch.  When we
tried to confirm this with <our> postal branch we were told that no it did
not apply to us since we had what is considered an institutional zip code
with the final 4 digits of the nine digit zip being the signifier for our
building.

We again contacted our vendors and asked them to notify the publishers
that the entire zip code had to be used.

Now comes the fun part.....we still had an unusually high number of claims
and I started to contact the publishers directly when problems developed.
As part of the stantard routine I verified our address....in all cases the
address was correct.  Recently we started a totally unrelated project that
required clipping the address labels from the issues and filing them since
many of the online journals will require entry of a code that appears on
the label.  What we discovered was the journals were still coming to the
old address.  FEW OF THE ADDRESS LABELS HAD BEEN CHANGED TO MATCH OUR NEW
ADDRESS BY THE PUBLISHERS...even though their <accounting> records had our
new location.

Added to this we now have the new problem that a few publishers have made
the assumption that there is only one library at the University of New
Mexico, and many of our titles are being sent to the main library while
several of theirs are ending up at our facility.

The problem appears to be more of an octopus than first appearance would
have suggested.  At this rate I will look forward to online if it would
cut out all the middle men.

Good Luck to us all!!!!
Cory Anne Johnstone Meyer
Head, Serials/Government Documents

University of New Mexico
Health Sciences Center Library
Albuquerque, NM  87131-5686