ACQNET v1n077 (May 19, 1991) URL = http://www.infomotions.com/serials/acqnet/acq-v1n077 ACQNET, Vol 1, No. 77, May 19, 1991 =================================== (1) FROM: Christian SUBJECT: Who's new on ACQNET today (8 lines) (2) FROM: Gay Dannelly SUBJECT: ALCTS reorganization (14 lines) (3) FROM: Vicky Reich SUBJECT: Combined monograph/serial acquisitions departments (30 lines) (4) FROM: Heather Miller SUBJECT: Accounts reconciliation (62 lines) (5) FROM: Richard Jasper SUBJECT: Atlanta climate (42 lines) (1) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: May 19, 1991 From: Christian Subject: Who's new on ACQNET today Steve Rockey Mathematics Librarian Cornell University Library E-mail: ROCKEY@MSSUN7.MSI.CORNELL.EDU (2) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 17 May 91 10:07 EDT From: "Gay N. Dannelly" Subject: RS Reorganization There has been some confusion about the open meeting on Resourses Section reorganization. The orginal plan, as described in the ALCTS Newsletter, is still the correct one. The open meeting will be held on Monday, July 1, 1991, from 11:30-12:30. It will follow the President's program and Alex Bloss is trying to keep it in the same or a nearby location. The comments on the reorganization that have appeared in ACQNET have been both interesting and thought provoking. Cecily Johns and I are both looking forward to an energetic discussion of the many issues and concerns shared by Section members. (3) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 17 May 91 09:06:49 PDT From: "VICKY REICH" Subject: Combined monograph/serial acquisitions departments Thank you to everyone who responded to my call for information about combined serials and acquisitions departments. In addition to those who wrote directly to ACQNET, quite a few people responded directly to me. There is a good crowd of folks managing both serials and monograph units. A number of people expressed interest in meeting in Atlanta, preferably late in the afternoon with suitable refreshments. I don't expect to be at ALA Annual, but anyone should feel free to organize a get together. Briefly, Stanford's Serials and Acquisitions Department is organized into five units: Exchange, Monograph Receiving and Gifts, Monograph Search and Order, Payments, and Serials. Serials checkin is manual. NOTIS is 6 months into implementation; NOFA is scheduled to come up in September. The Monograph Receiving folks "push-button-catalog" approval materials and gifts if suitable LC copy is found. For the record, the Head of Acquisitions position was eliminated during budget cuts, but not because management didn't think it was an important professional position. We were told to cut 16% of our budget and in general, management positions were cut before production jobs. The materials budget (at that point in time) had not been reduced, production levels had to be maintained as much as possible. With Stanford projecting a $100 million deficit over the next two years, it's hard to predict what shape the University and the Libraries will take in the near future. (4) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 17 May 1991 14:04 EDT From: Heather Miller Subject: Accounts reconciliation This posting may be too late to be of use, but here it is anyway. At the University at Albany, we divide monies among a multitude of subject funds much like many other academic libraries. The University knows and cares nothing about these - it pays our invoices from several large pots of money. In 1986 when we automated acquisitions, acquisitions accounting moved from Library Accounting to Acquisitions. We immediately stopped using state vouchers and substituted the paperwork from our system (Geac). We did local programming to make this paperwork fit our requirements. We worked closely with University Accounting to develop mutually accetable paperwork. We send batches of invoices over daily after matching our system-generated paperwork to the invoices. (I was interested to see that someone commented on his NOTIS-ge- nerated paperwork being useless - we looked at NOTIS last year and found the whole acquisitions system to be far weaker than ours.) From University Accounting, we get back a copy of our paperwork with their voucher numbers filled in. We also get a "carbon" of checks for less than $250.00 (those for larger amounts are written off campus and we can't get their carbons). And we get a monthly Accounting Report generated by the University's computer system. We log out each batch of invoices and log back in their returned voucher number sheets so we can tell if they lose or forget a batch. In addition to all this, we also have online access to the University Account- ing system. From own own system we get a multitude of reports, one of which lists every invoice processed through our system. This is useful for matching against the Accounting report from the University. We do our best to keep track of what the university is doing with our money and we have their full cooperation, even their expectation that we do it. What I've described here may sound like overkill, but given the absurd complex- ities imposed on us by the state, chronic staff shortages, and backlogs both in Acquisitions and University Accounting (not to mention Purchasing, which is another long story), various deadlines & restrictions, the fact that this year we are changing fiscal years from April-March to July-June, the fact that in the past year we've had no budget & had to stockpile invoices, had a spending freeze and had to stockpile invoices, a waiver system for exemption from the freeze, just to mention a few anomalies AND the fact that we are assessed interest on late payments means that all this checking is critical. Last year, the University's system suddenly showed Acquisitions short over $150,000.00 near the end of the FY. We had to (and did) prove the error to be theirs. After going over everything with a fine toothed comb, & double checking ways in which WE could have messed up, we narrowed the possibilities and it was eventually found to have resulted from double encumbering on the part of Purchasing, plus some more minor errors. I can't match item for item each payment on the large account (nearly $3,000,000.00) although I do that for the smaller ones. Lags in processing, lags in reported, etc. make checking up on University Accounting and Purchasing tricky despite all the means we have to do it. It could be a full-time job. I agree that acquisitions accounting belongs in Acquisitions - no one else understands it well enough - or cares enough. Throughout last year's crisis (believe me, being told you are short that much money is a sleepless-nights kind of crisis!) I had superb cooperation from University Accounting. It is important to be on good terms with these people before hand. It was also helpful that Acquisitions had a track record of accurate work and they had some respect for our automated system. In a complex system like this, even all the checking we do cannot prevent errors, cannot guarantee that they will be fixed, cannot necessarily pinpoint the most recent errors, but it is a big help. I can't imagine going a whole year without reconciling accounts - we'd never straighten out all the things that were paid from the wrong account, paid to the wrong vendor, paid twice, paid short, not paid, etc. This is one of my major responsibilities and I put a great deal of time into it - even on sabbatical! The main thing we have here that I don't think anyone else has mentioned is online access to the University Accounting system - we have to pay for it ($1400.00/year) but it is well worth the money. Anyone who can get this sort of thing certainly should. If we are to make the best use of our funds we have to do this kind of keeping watch - no one else will. (5) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 17 May 91 17:03:54 EDT From: Richard Jasper Subject: Beating the heat in Atlanta A short e-mail exchange with Kate Carpenter, University of Illinois at Chicago, suggests a word or two about climatological conditions re ALA Annual 1991 would be in order: Atlanta is in the Deep South and by the end of June it is in Deep Heat, i.e., temps by that point usually are over 90 degrees during the day and don't always get below 70 degrees at night. Moreover, downtown Atlanta, where almost everything is going on, is mostly concrete, steel and glass, although there are a few shady spots. (It's been said that "Atlanta is a forest in search of a city," which is true except for downtown.) Finally, we don't lack for humidi- ty, although it's quite a bit better here than coastal areas like Charleston and New Orleans. On the other hand, no seabreezes. On the positive side, there are NO un-air-conditioned public buildings, taxi cabs, trains, or buses. Atlanta as we know it wouldn't exist without air- conditioning, so air-conditioning is omnipresent. It's also subject to the usual extremes (too much, too little) and occasional outright failures. The preceding factors suggest the following in terms of clothing: Wear clothes that are lightweight (cotton is great), loose and comfortable, but not neces- sarily bare. It's better to have sleeves to roll up and a collar to loosen while walking down the streets than to be shivering bare-armed and bare-shoul- dered in a hotel that has mixed up the location of meeting rooms and refrigera- tors. Also, it wouldn't hurt to have a sun hat and sun glasses. Heat and glare are excellent ingredients for quick onset of a migraine. Don't despair, however. For once the meeting sites are relatively few in number AND generally close together. And if it's too much, you can go underground to MARTA and get around that way. One other thing: Drink lots of water. It's good for you in general and espe- cially so in hot weather. All the above is predicated on the notion that the current floodlike conditions (we've had rain for 12 consecutive weekends now) won't last (more's the pity) through the end if next month. Otherwise, scratch these suggestions and bring an umbrella, raincoat, galoshes... And a boat! ***** END OF FILE ***** END OF FILE ***** END OF FILE ***** END OF FILE *****