Hi Todd,

We still continue to check in and claim our print journals but we have made strides in reducing the amount of time we spend claiming.  We claim less frequently and we mark issues as unavailable after three failed claims (when I started we had numerous claimed issues that were on their ninth or tenth claim. It was a bit ridiculous!).

In your situation, I would say that you could probably stop checking in and claiming altogether.  When I was the serials librarian at a large public library, we had numerous branches with 100 or more print subscriptions and we did not check in or claim those titles.  The branch managers would periodically (no pun intended) scan the shelves to see if any of the titles had lapsed. If so, we would deal with it.

I think you could do something similar. Simply shelve the issues as they arrive and then do a quick scan every month or two to see if anything has lapsed. Should save you a lot of time.

Buddy Pennington

Electronic Resources & Serials Librarian

University of Missouri - Kansas City

800 East 51st Street

Kansas City, MO  64110

Phone: 816-235-1548

Fax: 816-333-5584

Email: penningtonb@umkc.edu

UMKC University Libraries: Discovery. Knowledge. Empowerment.

From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Todd Grooten
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 8:50 AM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: [SERIALST] Cessation of serials check in and claiming

Good morning all,

I know that this is an issue that has probably come up in the past, but I am interested in how many of you have stopped checking in and claiming print journals.  I work in a corporate library with less than 100 print subscriptions, and we are are considering stopping both of these processes.  It seems that the time spent doing these processes might outweigh any benefit they bring. 

Thanks in advance,

Todd M. Grooten

Cataloger, Fort Wayne, IN