Hi Lisa:

What a timely message!  We have been labeling our periodical issues at
the point of check in for several years now.  We had been printing
sheets of labels and filling in the date field and unbound location by
hand.  Problems were the labels are rather large and staff ended up
covering up graphics, text, contents info, Sarah Palin's forehead during
the election campaigning which apparently was interpreted as a political
statement... SO, we had 3 little Dymo printers in house already for
another labeling project but because the ink fades in 10 years, we could
not use them for the spine label project in the stacks.

I think this is the printer we're using

Dymo 400 LabelWriter
http://www.labelvalue.com/dymo-400-labelwriter-p-45.html?osCsid=3de08375fe033b1468ee7494a532173c

We decided to do a couple test labels with much smaller labels, these
printers are actually used to generate address and return address
labels. We've gone with the smaller return address label size.  The
software is apparently easy to load and troubleshoot, we don't care that
the ink may fade in 10 years, they'll be bound, the labels are crisp and
clear, we're no longer stopping to write on them or stamp the date.  The
learning curve for staff also seems to be fairly short. My most prolific
check in person is also the least comfortable with technology out of all
my staff.  She seems to have adapted very well and has been zooming
along, she said she has not lost any time and in fact thinks it might be
taking less time to generate the labels with the printer at her desk
rather than using the sheets of labels which we laboriously peel off,
date stamp and write on for each issue.

My big concern was something that we originally did with a property
stamp and a pen or pencil was now involving "technology" - hardware and
software which can break, for staff who need to keep periodicals checked
in and on the move out of the office and on to the locations.

We have checked the labels and glue for archival quality and are very
satisfied, they do apparently meet our standards.

I hope the above helps, if you have any more questions, just let me know
and we'll try to answer them for you.  Take care!  Heidi Fisher

Heidi A. Fisher
Assistant Order Librarian; Head, Serials Acquisitions Unit
Princeton University Library
Order Division - Periodicals, Continuations
One Washington Road
Princeton, NJ  08544

phone:  609-258-5415
fax:  609-258-0441
general e-mail: pers@princeton.edu

Lisa Stienbarger wrote:
> Good afternoon,
>
> I'm writing from the University of Notre Dame Libraries.  We are an
> ALEPH library and we are investigating purchasing a small desktop
> printer to print labels for our serial issues at check-in.  I've looked
> at a few printer brands and have talked to the manufacturers, Zebra and
> Dymo but I'm having trouble locating acid free/archival labels for these
> printers.
> Does your library print labels for serial issues at check-in?
> What printer are you using?
> Are you using archival labels?
>
> I would greatly appreciate any responses.
> Thank-you, Lisa S.
>