T&F has opened the article Roger mentions below to all until the end of October.  Please visit: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/03615260802669425

Kind regards

Ashleigh

Ashleigh Bell

Journals Sales Director (International)

Taylor & Francis Group
an informa business
4 Park Square | Milton Park | Abingdon | OX14 4RN | UK
email: ashleigh.bell@tandf.co.uk
web:  www.tandfonline.com

Taylor & Francis Group is a trading name of Informa UK Limited, registered in England under no. 1072954

Julia,

Yes, the data can be downloaded to a spread sheet and organized any way you want. There is an article about the program at Serials Librarian v.57: no.1-2 (Jul/Sep 2009) that has screen shots. The article also has a history of various counting methods and their advantages and drawbacks.

Roger

Serials Librarian

Kent State University at Stark

6000 Frank Ave. NW

Canton, Ohio

http://local2.stark.kent.edu/Library/Bindings/

Thanks Roger for sharing this information. Is the data easy to retrieve and downloadable to excel ?

We have tried to find an effective way to count in house print journal usage but was not successful in Millennium (III system) as it actually counts every time the title is updated (not necessary being used). We ended up creating a spreadsheet and enter titles/issues manually each time usage occur since we have very light usage anyway.

Thank you,

Julia

There is always the problem of patrons re-shelving their own issues. We have signs up but they are often ignored. We use software we developed locally and is available open source that works. Student assistant re-shelves the issue, comes to the Circ desk opens the program, clicks the title and everything is saved. You can recall the stats by title, date or usage.

Might need your network people to help install it since it uses a database structure, but it is customizable.

Download here http://serialcount.kent.edu/download.cfm

Roger

In theory you can have a barcode on the shelf that links to a dummy item record which can be counted for browsing.  For example you have a barcode on the shelf where Newsweek goes.  The barcode is entered in a dummy item record attached to the Newsweek bib.  The student/worker doing the reshelving can scan this shelf barcode with a handheld device as issues are reshelved.  Each scan counts as a “browse”.  The dummy item record is never deleted, hence you won’t lose statistics.  When statistics are gathered, the dummy item record will contain the total number of current issue browses, along with the browses for bound volumes.

Of course, this is coarser-grained than barcoding each individual issue. I haven’t worked in libraries that went to that level of detail – maybe other folks can chime in on the finer points.

On another note, scanning the shelf as issues are reshelved requires some supervision, or leaning on supervisors, to make sure the new practice keeps on happening.  Otherwise you will soon have issues going back to the shelf with no scanning and all the barcoding/dummy item record creation will have gone for naught, and your statistics will have gone awry.  You also have to make sure the handheld scanning devices are kept working, or have backups.

Hope this helps,

Diane Westerfield, Electronic Resources & Serials Librarian

Tutt Library, Colorado College

diane.westerfield@coloradocollege.edu

(719) 389-6661

(719) 389-6082 (fax)

Hi,

I’m a new serials librarian. We are barcoding our bound journal issues for inventory and statistical purposes. But with current issues, we'll be deleting those individual barcodes once they are bound and replacing them with one for the bound volume, and would therefore lose the stats associated with those barcodes.  I’d be interested to hear how other libraries handle this issue.

Thanks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kate Dougherty

Electronic Resources & Government Documents Librarian

Leonard S. Washington Memorial Library

Southern University at New Orleans

6400 Press Drive

New Orleans, LA  70126

504-286-5222

kdougherty@suno.edu