Decentralized Serials Administration

While I’ve already posted about journals check-in, I’m wondering how other library systems with multiple library sites manage serials in general.

I work in the ‘central’ branch at a college where there are two additional branch libraries.  A few years ago the decision was made to decentralize much of the serials administration, such that subscriptions, renewals, binding, and cataloging continued to be administered by the ‘central’ library staff, but check-in was managed by the branch libraries for titles which were shelved there.

This decentralized serials administration model poses problems for claiming missing issues, updating the cataloging for title changes and mergers (etc.), updating the frequency of the publication, and collecting journal issues for binding – all among the other exciting things that the world of serials throws our way.

These problems may all become non-issues as we move progressively towards an electronic-only serials collection, but in the meantime, it is a collection management mire.

Do you work with serials in a multi-site library system?  How does your library system handle serials administration?

You think you know, but you have no idea: Local Holdings

I just completed Palinet’s ‘Local Holdings Basic Maintenance’ online workshop.

Since I was given a basic orientation to creating local holdings in WorldCat, I wasn’t sure how useful this workshop would be.  My pragmatic brain was expecting to form a better foundation of the basic skills in composing local holdings records, such that my ILL Coordinator colleague would not receive so many ‘unfillable’ requests.

I was impressed beyond my expectations by the quality and depth of the workshop.  Two of my favorite outcomes were learning about the Strategic Union List file and the Local Holdings Offline Product.

The Strategic Union List file is a file one can query from WorldCat that contains all ILL requests received and requests filled by title for a calendar month.  Basic analysis will tell you whether you are filling a reasonable number of ILL requests.  If your unfilled requests are reaching the ‘unreasonable’ point, this probably has something to do with the information contained – or not contained – in your Local Holdings.  Making your local holdings complete will allow patrons to better request materials based on their actual availability and related lending policy.

The Local Holdings Offline Product is a list of all of your institution’s local holdings and is available for free upon request once a year from OCLC.  I’m a masterlist kind of gal, so this peaked my interest.  Going through this list to clean up erroneous or incomplete LHRs is a rainy-day project I’ll keep tucked away.

I highly recommend the Palinet online workshops to anyone looking to brush up on their skills or to develop more confidence in using OCLC Connexion.  Now that I know what all those toggle buttons are for, my LHRs will never be the same!