---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1999 10:43:32 -0800
From: Lesley Tweddle <Ltweddle@AUCEGYPT.EDU>
Subject: PERIODICALS VOLUME STATISTICS WHEN YOU DON'T BIND

Please excuse cross-posting again, but I got replies from both lists.

Out of four replies, two asked what the replies were!  It seems this is
one of life's major unanswered questions.

However.  One reply works for libraries that box their unbound issues,
and is: count the boxes.

To answer another question I got: we don't box our unbound issues.  We
stopped binding originally to save money, (though I believe it preserves
the materials too) and where we are it would have cost as much to have
boxes made as to have volumes bound, and still more to import boxes.  So
we chose, for not-binding, only those journals whose issues were thick
enough to show titles and numbering on their spines, and to stand up
without flopping, and we interspersed them with bound titles, and this
has been OK.  BUT - we can't count boxes!

The other reply, for which I am extremely grateful, was: "divide the
number of issues by 5.2".  The reasoning behind that practice, I was
told, had been lost in the mists of time, but that's the way _one
library_ reports to ARL, so if anyone else decides to adopt the same
method, they won't be alone!

The more I think about that, the more I like it.

Lesley Tweddle
Head, Serials Dept
American University in Cairo