Re: Claiming statistics? (Bill Cohen) Birdie MacLennan 14 Jun 2002 14:59 UTC
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 08:37:43 EDT From: Bill Cohen <BCohen7719@aol.com> Subject: Re: Claiming statistics? Dear Rick: I can supply some "informal estimates" from the "other end" (that of the Publisher), but regretfully we have not to date kept careful logs or statistics on this: 1) Accidental lost or non-receipt of missing issues appear to be cleared up after receipt of a 1st claim about 80% of the time; 2) Because of unintentional mishaps--and most of these appear to be caused by either unclear overseas addresses in foreign languages, or inaccurate bibliographic references, a 2nd claim is received, and these seem to resolve the situation in a remaining 15% of the cases; 3) In about 5% of the cases, a claim is not cleared up on a complimentary basis because the requester is not actually a subscriber (professionals in disciplines other than librarianship sometimes know that "claiming" is one way to retrieve a complimentary 'desk copy' of a single current journal issue that they would let to get), or the period of time involved is alarmingly old (15 or 20 years ago). Again, these are not hard facts, and I would ask readers not to cite these very rough "guestimates" as hard data. It really DOES help to receive a 2nd or 3rd claim, however, because sometimes an inaction is caused by changing staff or staff vacations, and the Publisher's workstations are not "shared stations." A small "tip" which experienced librarians probabl all know already: providing proof of payment with the first claim will almost always speed up the process considerably. With kind regards, Bill Cohen, Publisher The Haworth Press, Inc. 10 Alice Street Binghamton, New York 13904 http://www.haworthpress.com/ <BCohen7719@aol.com> In a message dated 6/12/02 1:02:15 PM, rickand@UNR.EDU writes: << An appeal to the Collective Wisdom: I've been told that someone, somewhere once did a study of claiming effectiveness and came up with a set of numbers that indicates how many times a first claim results in the actual receipt of a missing issue, how many times a second claim succeeds where the first one failed, etc. But if such a study exists I can't seem to find it. Can anyone either point me towards that study (or one like it) or share the results of any internal studies they might have done? I'm less interested in how long it takes to get results from claiming than I am in the ultimate effectiveness of the process. Thanks in advance for any help. If respondents wish to contact me off-list, I'll happily summarize for the group. ------------- Rick Anderson Director of Resource Acquisition The University Libraries University of Nevada, Reno "I'm not against the modern 1664 No. Virginia St. world. I just don't think Reno, NV 89557 everything's for sale." PH (775) 784-6500 x273 -- Elvis Costello FX (775) 784-1328 rickand@unr.edu