I have been dealing with serials in some respect for most of my 23 years.
With good subscription agents We use Faxon, Ebsco, Blackwell, and some
Matthews (some continuation type).  I rely on them to get the payments to
the publishers in time for the next year, even though we pay the agents in
July, at the beginning of our fiscal year.

I believe that most of the generated renewals come from the advertising/
public relations dept. which gets the list of all the 1999 subscribers.
Many are 1 or 2 mailings for a particular title and all they list is your
address.  Those publishers which have the ability to link their databases
between (ie) subscription/mailing dept. with the Advertising /sales area
tend to have more information on the mailing like the Subscription Agency,
whether it is 1st,2nd,3rd reminder.

I have found that on publisher, (Gordon & Breach/ Harwood) had been
sending us the same type of reminder for renewal BUT THEY DID NOT inform
the subscription agents.  (I BELIEVE THAT they have changed this.) I would
look at them and toss them thinking the subscription agent had been
notified but after repeated claims with no response, eventually discovered
the agent was waiting for notification of the publication of the volumes
so they could place the order be billed and bill us.

(I COULD BE WRONG ON THE ABOVE INFORMATION BUT THAT IS WHAT I PERCIEVED
THE PROBLEM TO BE)  As I said, I believe this has been corrected.

I DO FIND ONE GOOD THING NOW ABOUT THESE MAILINGS.  With more publishers
offering all or some of their titles with full text as part of the
institutional subscription, I am finding these mailings sometimes announce
this.  If nothing else, they often have some sort of publisher URL address
which I can go to, bookmark, and check to see if any of the titles we
subscribe to have the 'free'? online access.

John Lucas
Serials Librarian
University of Mississippi Medical Center
2500 North State St
Jackson, MS 39216-4505

(PH) (601) 984-1277
(FAX)  ( 601) 984-1262
<jlucas@ROWLAND.UMSMED.EDU>