Excuse me???? THEY want a steady stream??? Of course they do; they want the steady income. But, as I'm always telling my kids, we don't always get what we want.

YOU are the customer. If you need to batch them in the summer, do it. You shouldn't have to explain. We use National Bindery in Georgia; I have NEVER had them say anything about a "steady stream".

One thing we did with Time, Newsweek and US News & World Report was to buy duplicate subscriptions. We hold one copy downstairs in Acquisitions, and this way we never have missing issues, and we don't have to worry about availability while those titles are the bindery. They're inexpensive so we can do this. I realize it's not feasible as a general rule. But it's one idea you might consider for one or two inexpensive ones.

Allison P. Mays
Coordinator of Acquisitions & Cataloging
Millsaps College
1701 N. State Street
Jackson, MS 39210
601-974-1083
maysap@millsaps.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU] On Behalf Of Kathy Nystrom
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 9:23 AM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: [SERIALST] Bindery priorities/schedule

Hi, all:

Our binder (Heckman) prefers shipments in a steady stream, & pickups are
every 3 weeks.  We tend to bind when our serials system (III) notifies us
that enough issues have accumulated for a volume-altho we wait for another
issue to arrive, so that there is always a current issue or two on the
shelf.  However, we've received some comments about the lack of availability
of certain key journals during particular parts of a semester.  We've
considered batching binding during slow times-like summer and between
semesters-altho the binder probably wouldn't like it too much, and having
loose issues around for an extended time increases the chances of missing
issues.  Another alternative is to somehow identify specific titles and
allow them to accumulate unbound until a slack period or until a particular
class isn't being offered.  The only way we can think of to identify these
titles would be direct requests from faculty or subject liaisons.

Does anyone else out there have a better plan?  Any and all suggestions
welcome!

Kathleen A. Nystrom, MLS
Head of Technical Services
Eden-Webster Library System
470 East Lockwood Avenue
St. Louis, MO  63119-3194
(314)968-7151
(314)963-6086 (fax)
knystrom@webster.edu