Disappearing microform titles... (Buddy Pennington) Marcia Tuttle 04 Sep 2001 20:28 UTC

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2001 14:58:10 -0500
From: "MD_Buddy (Buddy Pennington)" <MD_Buddy@KCLIBRARY.ORG>
Subject: Disappearing microform titles...

Hi all,

In looking at our annual renewal list from ProQuest-Bell and Howell-UMI
(take your pick) we have discovered that several fairly popular titles are
no longer available on microfilm.  The list of titles that affects our
library are:

Audubon
Business Ethics Quarterly
MotorBoating
World Press Review
Country Music
Discover
Field and Stream
Journal of Career Planning and Employment
Kiplinger's Personal Finance
Outdoor Life,
Popular Science
Publications of the Modern Language Association of America
Skiing Magazine
Sky and Telescope

When I contacted our rep at ProQuest, we were told that the publishers had
decided not to continue to pay for microform.  We obviously can live without
the film for some of these titles, but it seems to me that the publishers
are making a big mistake discontinuing such titles as Popular Science,
Discover, World Press Review, etc.

Is there anything we can do about this?  Also, what ideas do you have about
retaining this stuff?  We do not have room to bind the materials.  We can
send the issues out to a vendor to film them, but many of these titles have
missing issues by the end of the volume (another important reason for the
film). And these other vendors charge more than ProQuest does.

Buddy Pennington
Document Delivery Librarian
Kansas City Public Library
md_buddy@kclibrary.org
816-701-3552