The life of a periodical: from the mail room to the bindery

Every day, periodicals magically arrive at the Periodicals Desk. You stamp them with the date and put them away. But have you ever wondered how they got there? Well, I will tell you.

The Life of a Periodical

First, a librarian selects the periodical. Then Mark orders the periodical. We get most of our periodicals through one major vendor - EBSCO. EBSCO acts as a liaison between us and the publishers of the periodicals. Instead of dealing with hundreds of publishers, we just have to deal with one vendor - it makes things much easier. We also get a few periodicals from Swets. We order some periodicals directly from their publishers because they are not available through EBSCO or Swets.

Periodicals arrive daily in the mail. I retrieve them from the mail room on a cart, and I unpack them and check them in. Much of my time is spent checking in periodicals. Once I check in a periodical, it shows up in the ALADIN record under "Recent Issues" (See Journal of Bacteriology for an example). After check-in, I bring it up to the periodicals desk to be put away in a folder.

Sometimes a periodical does not arrive on time. When this happens, I claim the issue. Using MS Access, I generate a list of issues that have not arrived on time. I claim EBSCO and Swets journals once every two weeks. In the last month I have probably claimed nearly 200 issues. Sometimes I have to claim issues three or four times before a publisher will decide I'm serious and send them. If we are missing a current periodical that we should have, it is likely that I have claimed it. If you ever need to know, I can tell you whether a periodical has arrived or not. Please use me as a resource.

Some periodicals are sent to Reference. They are shelved in the reference section.

A few periodicals are routed to various library staff. Most of these titles relate to library science in some way. These titles sometimes take a while to circulate to various library staff. Some examples are Publisher's Weekly, Booklist, and Library Hotline. Each has it's own list of staff who want to read it. Once all of the staff have seen the issue, it is sent back to me. Often routed titles will be delayed in reaching the Periodicals Desk. If a title relates to library science, it is probably routed, so you may not have the latest issues.

Once we accumulate enough issues of a periodical, it is usually bound. Mark and I generate lists of periodicals that need to go to the bindery, and Doug pulls them from the folders and prepares them for the bindery. When they return from the bindery, you take them out to the shelves.

So there you have it. The life of a periodical.