ACQNET v1n004 (December 12, 1990) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/serials/stacks/acqnet/acq-v1n004 ACQNET, Vol 1, No. 4, December 12, 1990 ======================================= (1) FROM: Editor SUBJECT: Editorial board, numbering error, network name, membership list (24 lines) (2) FROM: Editor SUBJECT: Identifying vendors by name (15 lines) (3) FROM: Scott Wicks SUBJECT: The network, editorial policy (13 lines) (4) FROM: Meta Nissley SUBJECT: The network (13 lines) (5) FROM: Rosann Bazirjian SUBJECT: Technical services organization, periodicals check-in (13 lines) (6) FROM: Vicky Reich SUBJECT: UK approval plans, form plans, where to buy UK/US titles (24 lines) (7) FROM: Richard Jasper SUBJECT: UK/US approvals, indentifying vendors by name (40 lines) (8) FROM: Joe Pulk SUBJECT: UK approval plan, slip plan, holding UK order for US ed. (18 lines) (9) FROM: Janet Flowers SUBJECT: Source for exchange rates data (18 lines) (1) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FROM: Editor SUBJECT: Editorial board, numbering error, network name, membership list We have an editorial board: Meta Nissley, Richard Jasper, Carol Chamberlain, and Rosann Bazirjian. Yes, I know it's four, and I said we would elect three if we had more than three volunteers, but I couldn't see it to eliminate a perfectly good volunteer. Thank you, Meta, Richard, Carol, and Rosann for volunteering. I expect to have some work for you soon. I seem to have problems with numbers. A colleague duly noted that I sent two postings labelled v. 1 no. 2. That, it seems, puts me in great company with many illustrious publishing houses. Thank you, serials librarians among us, for keeping mum on this. In return I promise to not change the name of the group. Speaking of names, nobody having objected to ACQNET -- actually my wife did. She thought it sounded too much like ACQNE which, you will recall was one of the submission. -- ACQNET is what this is. I am planning to send a list of participants so that we can all know who we are. I plan to send it twice a year, a couple of weeks after each ALA meeting. Please let me know if you want something different. Now, on to real issues. (2) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- FROM: Editor SUBJECT: Identifying vendor by name Whether to identify vendors by names in our communications among ourselves is an issue which Richard Jasper brought to us in his posting (see UK/US Imprints elsewhere in this mailing.) I decided to leave the names in Richard's message, having thought his admo- nition through. Nobody said anything nasty, or untrue, so I think it belong in an open, colleguial exchange, which is what I'm interested in. In princile, I want to do it, avoiding scurrilous remarks and sticking to the dispassionate objectivity for which I would like to become well known. What do you think? If, as I expect, opinions on this issue are fairly closely divided, we'll ask the editorial board to pass on it. (3) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 11 Dec 90 09:06:40 EST From: Scott Wicks Subject: Potential use of national acquisitions knowledge Before we decide all topics to be excluded from this service, I would like to v oice my desire FOR the exchange of such information as "which vendor do you use for country x?" There may be other acquisitions librarians out there who don' t have connections with ten other ARL/large academic institutions, who can't pi ck up the phone or bitnet a long-time friend to gather such information. With some type of editorial policy in place, I believe that the exchange of suc h information could be controlled so as not to bombard us all with daily reques ts for such information. (4) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 11 Dec 90 14:20:46 PST From: MNISSLEY@CALSTATE (mnissley@calstate) Subject: RE: Acquisitions Librarians Electronic Network Christian: I did receive your message. Thank you for being so patient in getting my correct number. At the moment I am on my way to another meeting, so do not have time to respond fully to your comments and thoughts. I am happy to volunteer support in whatever way I can (editorial board, etc.) We are all busy, and you are right, this will take time, but hopefully some good discussion will take place. [ 3 lines of Meta's message got lost. Ed.] (5) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 11 Dec 90 07:44:27 EST From: Rosann Bazirjian I think your plans sound great, and will volunteer to help edit, if you can use my services! I think my question I shared with you earlier about reorganization of acquisitions/technical service departments would be a good one to ask this group. If people are reorganizing, due to new automated systems, etc., what are they doing? Is cataloging being absorbed into acquisitions, or vice versa? We are toying with the idea of incorporating periodical check-in into the Current Periodical Room for both check-in and servicing. Is anyone doing that, and does it work? (6) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 10 Dec 90 20:35:08 PST From: "VICKY REICH" 1. Has anyone cancelled his or her British approval plan? 2. Has anyone converted to a forms only plan? I heard earlier this summer that an institution of higher learning in Alabama had converted to forms only and was holding the forms for (some period of time??) to see whether an American edition would show up. 3. Has anyone instructed his or her domestic approval plan vendor to begin supplying the US edition of UK/US imprints? Actually, maybe some people have been doing this all along. At Emory and my previous institution our emphasis has been on eliminating any domestic duplication of UK imprints. ****************** Stanford has a UK approval plan with Stevens and Brown. Last year the Social Sciences went to a slip plan; we were getting too many (expensive!!) dups and materials which were not relevant for our collections. Presently, we're evaluating UK vendors for the Humanities, but we'd also like to once again receive books instead of forms for the Social Sciences. We're inviting vendors to give presentations in February...all "war stories" welcome. (7) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Dec 1990 09:23 EST From: Richard Jasper Subject: U.K. materials on approval Below I'm attaching (actually, rekeying; like a do-do brain, I erased it, then realized I wanted to send it) a reply regarding U.K. materials on approval from Joe Barker. I think he has a very good point, i.e., we need to be careful not to toss around too freely the names of vendors, or, for that matter, institutions (since we often know who the other fella is using). I think we should add an entry saying that all replies to this question will be edited to eliminate name of vendor(s) and name of institution. Makes it more like a survey, huh? Then the only other question is whether you want to do the editing -- or have me do it, since I'm the one who posed the question. I'd be amenable, as usual. Honest, I really do have a job here and work at it but I really do like this stuff! Here's Joe's reply: "Richard-- To reduce unwanted duplication, Berkeley canceled its approval plan with Stevens & Brown at the end of 1989, and is receiving all of its UK materials through its domestic approval plans (Univ Pr with a local bookstore; the rest with Coutts). We had tried having two plans and instructing each vendor to treat and not treat specific publishers (to avoid duplication), and we still got duplicates galore. We are concerned about the speed of obtaining UK imprints through domestic sources -- not about price. We are also concerned that Coutts will not be able to reach minor publishers in the UK. It's too new for us to be able to draw conclusions. (P.S. I am sending this message only to you at Emory. If you think it's worth forwarding on, you have my permission to do so. But we must be very careful of ethics when we start zapping vendor evaluation information around, and decisions like this may be construed as the result of vendor evaluation. In our case it was NOT: we simply wanted to reduce dupicates. We did not change because of any fault of Stevens & Brown. Likewise, our doubts about the speed and comprehensiveness of receiving UK imprints are not criticisms of Coutts. Coutts and we are in an exploratory phase. JOE)" (8) --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Dec 90 15:42:27 EST From: Joe Pukl Subject: response UK approval plan Christian, In response to Richard Jasper's questions about British approval plans, here at the Univ of South Carolina we changed our British tradeplan to slips in the early 80's and then cancelled the slips in 1989. We found that we were getting too many coffee-table military books on the plan and that we weren't ordering enough slips to justify the sorting, etc. I did, at one time, with this plan,try to hold slips to see if a US edition would appear. This was in the mid-80's and I found no consistent pricing trend. It was a major logistical headache so I quit holding and just ordered from the slip vendor. On our current scholarly-trade publisher domestic plan we asked the vendor to supply any US editions that are published. We will return it if we already own it. So far, 4 months, we have not had any noticable duplication. Joe Pukl University of South Carolina (9) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Janet L Flowers" Subject: exchange rates In response to Richard Jasper's query about exchange rate information... Luke Swnces Bibliographer, reports that the monthly, International Financial Statistics, gives daily rates in U.S. dollars. However, its monthly, quarterly, annual, and 3 year retrospect ive for for currencies are now in SDRs (special drawing rights), a stand ard economic measure. If one used it as the basis, one could write a program to measure relative changes of the dollar against foreignn currencies in terms of SDRs. The data is available on paper but the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences at UNC-CH also has it on computer which probably could be downloaded to a diskette. Luke was not certain that it would be worth the time to do this however. Maybe one thing the ACQNET could do is to keep us informed about informal local studies that might be helpful to other libraries? Good luck, Richard. I've told you all I know about this topic. Janet Flowers