I believe I've said this here before, but people change so am going to repeat - we do not ever "cancel" a subscription.  We instruct our agent to not renew it.

That avoids the problem Judith cites below, of publishers not sending issues that have been paid for.  One could also specify "cancellation at the end of the current subscription period" but in my experience that word cancellation is easily misunderstood.

More directly to your inquiry, once you have instructed your vendor to not renew things, the publisher can bill you six ways from Tuesday and you are under absolutely no obligation to do anything but toss the bills in the garbage.  US law is that anything sent to you unsolicited is yours, so they can't make you send them back either.

The "problem" that can happen is that your vendor has already paid the subs.  In that case you'll need to deal with them - Harrassowitz credits us back if they can collect from the pub, otherwise we're "stuck" for another year.
If you have many titles (and it sounds as though you do) you may want to send out a blanket list, saying, "Please do not renew these until further notice" and then confirming non-renewals as decisions are made.

Finally, publishers have indeed heard this before.  Mostly if they do call, I just tell them budget restraints along with usage statistics didn't allow us to continue with it, and so far none of them have been surprised to hear it.

Thanks,
Jeanette Skwor

-----Original Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Stokes, Judith
Sent: Wednesday, September 16, 2009 8:22 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Re: [SERIALST] Cancellation question

Hi Diane,

Your customer service rep is correct regarding your obligation to publishers. They cannot "come back" and charge you, if you canceled your order through your agent*. It is very possible that you will discover that several publishers are not really on the same calendar as your agent, so you may have some who will not send you the last issue of a volume, even when you claim it. Also, many publishers will "grace" you an issue or two or three past your cancellation date, because some folks pay late, and it's easier for them to sort it all out after the first few issues of the year.

In the late spring or early summer, there will be calls from some of the publishers to follow up on whether you really intended to cancel, and if so, why. Don't feel "put on the spot." Just tell them that you had to cancel too many titles to remember them all, and look up the ones they asked about. You can answer "why" with an explanation of the process ... that title was checked for usage vs. price and did not qualify, or the faculty in that dept were polled, whatever ...Publisher reps understand that if you canceled hundreds of titles you will not have specific details on every one, but they really need to know how the decisions were made.

I have found it helpful to have a few empty shelves ready for the issues we did not "expect." Be sure the check-in records of your canceled titles are flagged ahead of time so you don't start the summer with Jan and/or Feb checked in and claims pending for Mar. and/or  Apr. on a hundred canceled titles. Towards the end of the summer, you can weed the shelves of all those Jan and Feb issues. As for other titles that didn't quit then, you may want to check to see if they are paid up to a later renewal date. In any case, you don't owe anyone for subscriptions you did not prepay.

*Just one caveat -- Ask your agent about standing orders and/or "bill laters"  (subscriptions that were so far behind in fulfillment that the agent stopped billing you so the publisher can catch up) -- those are the only titles where a difference between the timing of your instructions and the agent's records of your prior orders can cause them to expect you to pay for a volume you may have thought you canceled.

More questions? Feel free to call me. I've done this a few times already. <sigh>

Good luck,

Judith Stokes
Rhode Island College
Providence, RI 02908
401-456-8165
jstokes@ric.edu

________________________________________
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Diane Westerfield [Diane.Westerfield@COLORADOCOLLEGE.EDU]
Sent: Wednesday, September 16, 2009 4:58 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: [SERIALST] Cancellation question

Hi,

I am undertaking my first large print journal cancellation project.  My question to you serials veterans is:

Do I need to notify publishers directly about these cancellations?  Or is it sufficient, as my customer service rep says, for our subscription agent to not place an order and that will signify as a cancellation?

I've seen a few expensive titles linger on a year later than they were supposed to because the publisher wasn't informed in time of the intent to cancel.  We are cancelling many titles (of publishers of varying size and type) and counting on the cost savings going forward.  I don't want to see a single publisher come back and charge us for unwanted print.  However, notifying several dozen publishers of specific title cancellations would be a lot of work, I'd rather avoid any unnecessary projects.  Any words of wisdom on this would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Diane Westerfield
Electronic Resources and Serials Librarian
Colorado College, Tutt Library
(719) 389-6661
(719) 389-6082 (fax)
diane.westerfield@coloradocollege.edu