ACQNET: Electronic vs. Print Format Accounting for Serials

Date:  Thu, 21 Sep 2006 16:48:26 -0400
From:  Adam Murray <adam_at_adlil.com>
Subject:  Electronic vs. Print Format Accounting for Serials

I have recently taken a job as Head of Acquisitions and discovered
this issue:

Currently, our ledgers are broken down into the various departments
(Chemistry, Biology, etc.)  Each of these departments gets an allocation
for purchasing serials.  However, each serial a department purchases is
attributed to a format/fund code -- for instance, under the Chemistry
department, there is a fund for Chemistry Print, Chemistry Electronic, 
etc. 
The problem arises out of several funds -- we have Dual Print &
Electronic, Dual Print w/Free Electronic, Memberships, and Packages. 

The question has come up:  to what degree should we differentiate between
print, electronic, and print+electronic? A report showing how much we spend
on electronic journals will only show the costs of those journals that are
electronic only...not those designated Dual Print & Electronic. To me that
seems acceptable, but what about memberships and packages?  Memberships
include print journals, but the costs of these do not show up when we 
run reports
on how much we spend on print. 

How does everyone else do this?  Do you run reports on format out of the 
PO, or
do you run reports on format out of the MARC records (if you have a bib 
record
for each format, that takes care of most of it, right?)

Adam

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