We get about 500 titles here at our small college, but I wouldn’t consider not checking anything in, even the dailies and weeklies. I just don’t see that it is at all fiscally responsible. When you are paying $900.00 for a yearly subscription to the Washington Post, I would assume you would want to know if you missed a week of papers, as happens at times especially for us with the Wall Street Journal. How would you know unless you were consistently checking things in? Rely on diligent student workers or patrons to notify you? I can’t see that being very viable.
To be sure, some things aren’t bothered with, such as little newsletters, but anything else would severely limit my ability to be a good steward of our collection and my ability to serve patrons, coworkers and the college. I haven’t been doing this for a long time, but I’ve been doing it long enough to know that there is never a shortage of problems in the serials dept. Sometimes publishers will stop a subscription because they and our agent have not communicated clearly, or we will miss weeks worth or months worth, as once happened with Economist magazine, even though we paid for it. I’m constantly using the claim function of the Acquisitions module on Voyager to untangle these problems. Ebsco agents help solve problems, but they don’t catch them. If I didn’t know about these issues in good time, I wouldn’t be able to get reimbursed or get replacements. Then the time and money spent working out issues and trying to get ones you missed would outweigh the time you saved on not doing check-in, which is approx. 30-45 min maximum student time per day, less if there isn’t a lot of mail.
Abbigail Gregg
Library Technician
Geneva College - McCartney Library
acgregg@geneva.edu
724-847-6693
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Coakley, Lynn
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2012 4:02 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: [SERIALST] checkin question
To all:
I hope this has not been discussed ad nauseum......
We have had a retirement effective June 30. The position won't be re-filled. The person was the paper periodicals check in person. We don't have a huge collection any more (approx. 225 titles), but still I can't figure out how to wriggle room from any one else's time. We are a union shop and people are allowed to say - not my job - so it's fallen to me and a work study who is good but as we know with work studies, they tend to just vanish.
So, my thought is moving toward not checking them in and taking our chances. We deal with Ebsco whose staff is all so helpful. I just want to talk with anyone who has made this decision to see if it's been a disaster or if it's been doable. If this has been discussed to death and I just don't remember (I tend to delete if it's a topic that I'm not interested in at that moment) could you reply to me off list?
Thanks very much
Lynn
(and that doesn't even go to our retiree's acquisitions job)
--
Lynn Coakley
Coordinator of Technical Services
Library
Springfield Technical Community College
One Armory Sq.
Springfield, MA 01102
413.755.4565
fax 413.755.6315
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