Journals to do list

After a bit of reading of the system manual it's starting to become clear what needs to be done.

First job is to reset the system. The report at the moment says that we have 96 journal issues that haven't been received (it also doesn't look like any of my predecessors used the claims reporting claims report has hardly ever been reset). What I have to do is to check that we have indeed claimed these 96 issues and then send the report to print (or trick it into thinking it's printed - I don't actually want reams of paper!). Sending the report to print clears it so that - next week when I come and look again there will only be issues that should have been received in this week.

Second job is to claim any issues that haven't been received and mark any really old ones as not received on the system - this will give us a clean slate, there's no way I'll have time to claim for much retrospectively but hopefully once the process is in place I should stay on top of them.

Third job is to get the predictions working right and set/ tweak the claims parameters - this'll take a couple of weeks to a month and alot more reading of the manual!

Clear as mud...

Well, just checked the suppliers site to see if they provide details of their claims policies. The result: Nada. From experience though, most of the suppliers do not guarantee to provide back issues if the publication date is more than 90 days ago. I think I should therefore get 3 claims in before the 90 days is up so from the point of view of claims parameters I'm looking at 2 weeks past due date for the first claim, 6 weeks for the second claim, and 10 weeks for the 3rd claim... I can tweak that later if it doesn't work.

On the plus side, the supplier's site mentions that they provide Tables of Contents - I can't see any sign of this on my account so I've emailed them to activate this part of my account (not the first time functionality has been missing!). Tables of Contents could be really useful when I get to the point where I'm feeding current awareness to the library webpage...

First, to find out what I need to know...

Just having a look at my journals objective - I've pulled the manual for the LMS and it looks like a number of decisions need to be made. The main thing is to decide at what point to transfer claims from our system to our suppliers system. It is possible to set our system up to email the suppliers when items are a certain amount overdue BUT (and this is a very big but) my gut feeling is that the publication schedules for our journals are nowhere near constant enough to fully automate the process - I can see that somewhere down the line we'd be claiming for journals that haven't even been published.

A certain level of human (i.e. ME!) intervention will be needed. This is dull work but I will have to set aside regular time every week to do it if I'm going to get the journal collection anywhere near where I want it to be...

So what do I need to know?

Well I know that our system can produce reports of overdue copies once a week but I need to know how to do this and what parameters to set for the reports. This will need me to find out a bit about our suppliers claims policies - when do they act on a claim? - how long to leave it before claiming - when should I claim by?

I'll also need to review the prediction set on the system (these are set for most titles but my feeling is they are probably innacurate and will lead to spurious claims...).

So, there's a couple of sources I need to check-out - first is to read up on our journal supplier's policies. Second is to work out how to mesh our system into those policies to form a claiming procedure that works....

journals

Had to find a more manly picture after that last post but I do hate forms.

Here's a more detailed plan about what I want to do with my journals collection next year and the development I'll need to undergo to do it.

i) First bit is to work out how the journals module of my library management system works. I know that it can produce overdue reports for claims and the suppliers now have a good front end for entering claims - I need to get the supply alot more consistent, and put in business controls. Sources for this develpment are possibly my professional network (an extremely overworked sys admin) but more likely it'll be a case of hitting the manuals. Can't really afford training.

ii) I need to do a review of journal usage at the start of the year. This is essential as it will drive decisions about what to do with the hardcopy collection. Basically the question is do we give up on providing more scholarly content and focus on the more browsable content? The development need here is really finding an accurate method of journal survey. I would like to use rfid tags and compare it to traditional methods but I'll need to do some research into methods.

iii) Third objective is to improve access by publishing tables of contents. The new books blog has shown that blogging is an ideal medium for current awareness but the development need is about researching rss and web development to determine what can be done. The idea is to feed up headlines/ summaries that link to requests for photocopies.