ACQNET v1n034 (February 25, 1991) URL = http://www.infomotions.com/serials/acqnet/acq-v1n034 ACQNET, Vol 1, No. 34, February 25, 1991 ======================================== (1) FROM: Christian SUBJECT: Who's new on ACQNET today (11 lines) (2) FROM: Mark Haslett SUBJECT: Slip approval plans (32 lines) (3) FROM: Ann Okerson SUBJECT: Directories of document delivery services (10 lines) (4) FROM: Vicky Reich SUBJECT: Slavic orders and subscriptions (9 lines) (5) FROM: Rachel Miller SUBJECT: Surplus library materials (20 lines) (6) FROM: Karen Muller SUBJECT: Ownership vs access (18 lines) (7) FROM: Karen Schmidt SUBJECT: Staff use of personal radio/cassette players (20 lines) (8) FROM: Michael Gorman SUBJECT: Staff use of personal radio/cassette players (25 lines) (1) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: February 25, 1991 From: Christian Subject: Who's new on ACQNET today John Archer Joyce Ogburn Head, Order Unit Collect. Devel. Support Librarian Acquisitions Department Yale University Library Univ. of California, San Diego E-mail: JOYCE_OGBURN@YCCATSMTP.YCC. E-mail: JFARCHER@UCSD.EDU YALE.EDU I'm not sure that I have Joyce's right title, but it should be close. (2) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 24 Feb 91 14:07 EST From: Mark Haslett Subject: Slip approval plans For a variety of reasons, I'm a fan of what I refer to as "slip approval" plans (vs. "book" approval or blanket plans.) From my perspective, slip approval plans should be: (i) limited in number (i.e. don't bury yourself in slips from a variety of vendors, it'll only increase the workload of your staff, selec- tors, and yourself); (ii) broad in scope (that's one of the reasons for getting slips vs. books - if you spend hours refining a profile why not just use a book approval plan?); and (iii) easy to implement and monitor (with particular attention being paid, for example, to the timely return of slips from selectors.) Once established, however, how do you determine the effectiveness of a slip approval plan? One measure, but by no means the only one of course, is the percentage of orders generated from slips supplied. Here's an example: We have a slip plan for North American publications (because of subject overlap, we may get more than one copy of a slip for several departments; e.g. Philosophy, Divinity, and Religious Studies may all get a copy of the same slip.) Totals for our Fiscal 1989-90 were: 33,591 slips supplied 12,673 slips recommended for ordering and then searched 8,889 slips used for ordering. In other words, 26.5% of slips supplied resulted in orders. Just looking at that percentage, my "feel" is that the plan is an effective one for both library and supplier. The vendor seems to concur. However, I have never compared these stats with those from other libraries. Does anyone else keep similar stats? (3) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 24 Feb 91 22:31:37 EST From: Ann Okerson Subject: Directories of document delivery services At the Oklahoma Conference, just completed, someone suggested that we need to have a directory of document delivery services. I'm convinced there is such an animal (or are such animals) and that I have seen a couple of years ago an annotated list with some 200 (at least) options in it. Could someone give us citations to such directories? I believe that the need was expressed in Fred Lynden's paper on Resource Sharing. (4) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 24 Feb 91 20:19:23 PST From: "VICKY REICH" Subject: BANKRUPTCY OF LES LIVRES ETRANGERS Stanford University has moved subscriptions and standing orders that were with Les Livres Etrangers to Collets. We are concerned about getting our 1991 subscriptions started; we discovered as part of this switch that we had not received invoices for 1991 titles. (5) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 25 Feb 91 16:10:15 CST From: Rachel B Miller Subject: Surplus library materials We have some questions about disposition of surplus library materials: -- If your library is able to sell surplus materials to bookdealers, how do you select the bookdealer(s)? If you let competitive bids, how does this mechanism work, and what are its advantages and disadvantages? Do you place the materials on consignment? Do you sell for cash or credit? Who in your library is authorized to make these arrangements with bookdealers? What records are maintained? -- Do you have a policy that governs how the proceeds of such sales are to be allocated? Does anyone allocate proceeds by subject based on the subject of the titles sold? We'd be grateful for copies of written policies, examples of bid requests, etc. (send to me at Acquisitions Dept., Univ. of Kansas Libraries, Lawrence, KS 66045-2800) (6) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 25 February 1991 18:10:01 CST From: "Karen Muller" Subject: Ownership vs. access (Forwarded note) Now here's an interesting inquiry from my other list ... ==============================Original Bar============================== From: Dorman Smith -- Central Michigan Univ. <3XCE3U5@CMUVM.BITNET> The Libraries at CMU are developing proposals for funding and resource alloca- tion that move us away from being a predominantly "ownership" type of opera- tion. Some heat and very little light seems to have been generated in discus- sions of this issue, but I am looking for some concrete evidence that some libraries have actually, consciously made a change. I would be most interested to hear from readers at institutions where actual budgets were reshaped, collection development policies rewritten, or other initiatives taken to effect such a shift. Contact persons, BITNET addres- ses, or even just institutional names would be welcome. (7) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 25 February 1991 10:30:39 CST From: Karen Schmidt Subject: Staff use of personal radio/cassette players I was glad to see the question about "walkmans" in technical service areas. I opened the door to "walkmans" about 6 years ago in Acquisitions. At first, it was just a trial: I said that if there was evidence that the error rate was going up, we couldn't continue with them. The only other rule was that I didn't want them turned up so loudly that non-wired folk could here them (also no singing along, but I guess that goes without saying - people who sing along with their "walkmans" are almost always painfully out of tune and this tends to be policed pretty well by anybody who has to listen to it...) Six years later, it's still working out just fine - I occasionally have to ask someone to turn down the volume, but there is absolutely no evidence that people make more mistakes or are distracted in any way - they still hear the telephone and others around them - they definitely have not tuned in and dropped out ... so to speak. Considering the (generally) rotten pay our staffs receive and the high level of service and detail-work they throw themselves into daily, I think it's important to give them as many perks as we can. About half the people in Acquisitions have "walkmans" - sometimes I suspect they are not listening to any music at all - just concentrating. From my point of view we need to lighten up about this sort of thing. (8) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 25 Feb 91 8:51:33 PST From: Michael Gorman Subject: "Walkmen" in technical services I think that a lot of jobs in acquisitions and other technical processing areas are dull and repetitious, and will continue to be so no matter what we do. Many of the people who do those jobs are not very well paid, have social pressures (being single parents, etc.) to which technical processing adminis- trators should be sensitive, and work in less than satisfactory environments. I strongly believe that a small pleasure such as the use of "walkmen" ("walk- persons"?) should be permitted in areas where conversation with the users of the library or with colleagues is not an integral and continuing part of the job. In other words, I think their use should be dependent on purely practical reasons ("does it interfere with the job?") and not on aesthetic grounds or (the true reason, I suspect, for denial of their use) loss of control over the working lives of those managed. I wish I had access to such devices when I earned a crust filing cards and shelving books, but that was shortly after the Late Pleistocene Era and "walkmen" did not exist and would certainly have been banned by the dragons if they had. If I could offer but one piece of advice to supervisors, managers and administrators it would be: "Lighten up." ***** END OF FILE ***** END OF FILE ***** END OF FILE ***** END OF FILE *****