Thanks to all who have weighed in on how to handle these freebies.  I
must agree with Monica.  In fact, I went through the same weeding
process several years ago when I inherited serials.  I found a mare's
nest of Princeton files with random issues and short runs of very
obscure stuff.  Now that we are finally cataloging serials and just now
setting up prediction patterns in Aleph, we need to be much stricter.
"Having to watch out for your free run ending" is my biggest concern,
since we get almost everything from one vendor now.  I'm leaning toward
a giveaway rack.  Katherine H. Hill

Department Chair

North Campus Library

Erie Community College

6205 Main St., Williamsville, NY 14221

716-851-1278

Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 10:50:22 -0500

From: Monica Berger <MBerger@CITYTECH.CUNY.EDU>

Subject: Re: Handling free periodicals

Adding free periodicals to your collection can create a collections
development nightmare down the line because typically you end up with a
short, dead runs of the periodical since the free "subscription" ends
after a limited period of time. Use the free copies for selection
purposes or sell them as gifts or put them out in a browsing area but
don't integrate them into your collection. There are, of course,
exceptions, specialty titles that can not be subscribed to via a
periodicals vendor and that you want to have in your collection because
of departmental accreditation or faculty request. This problem happened
here before the advent of an ILS that generates reports on claims and
missing issues. These titles were never bound and lingered in Princeton
files for many, many years until I spent considerable time identifying
them, weeding them (a few were bound and/or subscribed to) and updated
in the ILS. Nevertheless, being alert to your free periodicals and not
being able to claim them and having to watch out for your free run
ending is too much of a hassle IMHO.

Prof. Monica Berger

Technical Services/Electronic Resources Librarian Ursula C. Schwerin
Library New York City College of Technology, CUNY 300 Jay St.

Brooklyn, NY 11201-1909

718 260-5488

http://library.citytech.cuny.edu <http://library.citytech.cuny.edu/>

mberger@citytech.cuny.edu