Serials, one of the more complicated areas of library technical endeavors,
has lacked the benefit of standards for a long time. Even now, with standards
beginning to be available, the majority of institutions are not working within
standard serials formats. A survey to determine the use of serials standards
in libraries was conducted in 1988 by the American Li¬brary Association,
Resources and Technical Services Division, Serials Section, Committee to Study
Serials Standards. In the spring of 1988 a survey was sent to a group encompassing
the Association of Research Libraries members, CONSER participants, United States
Newspaper Program participants, Microform Project libraries, and some vendors
and librarians who attended the Committee meetings on a regular basis.
The survey questionnaire assessed the current level of serials standards awareness
of librarians and vendors. Topics included the type of serials systems used,
standards relevant to serials control and union listing and whether or not they
are implemented, types and levels of training staff received in the application
of standards, benefits of the standards, and areas where standards are most
needed.
Once an essential part of the library school curriculum, acquisitions in the present day rarely, if ever, is taught on a regular basis. Acquisitions is seen not simply as a specialization of a relatively few librarians, but as a fundamental part of the work of librarians in many settings. A review of early formal training in acquisitions and the textbooks pertaining to the subject, and an analysis of the literature provide an historical perspective on education for acquisitions, and suggest elements that may provide basic and adequate training in acquisitions useful to all librarians.
A summary of the author's sabbatical leave experiences and reading on library research methods and writing for publication. It describes the techniques of locating and reading library materials, note-taking, and writing. It includes a few basic rules and some avoidable pitfalls the author found through trial and error. Many of the cited works were not written by librarians, although research and writing are part of the daily activities of most librarians.
In the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) Online Project, the DDC was studied as a searcher's tool for subject access, browsing, and display in an experimental online catalog. Subject terms from the DDC Relative Index and Schedules were added to bibliographic records and indexed in the catalog. Enhanced with the DDC, the experimental online catalog offered users additional subject searching strategies not feasible through the alphabetical approaches of subject headings and keywords of existing online catalogs. This paper describes how bibliographic records were enhanced with subject terms from the DDC. Results show that the DDC was a major contributor of unique, general subject terms to bibliographic databases. Incorporated in online catalogs, the DDC, and possibly other library classifications, can enhance subject access and provide additional subject searching strategies to system users.
Shelflist samples have been advocated as a method of collection evaluation, but few discussions of the use of such samples are found in the literature. A random sample of 5 percent of the shelflist at Louisiana State University was studied to provide detailed information about the distribution of imprints according to age and language of publication, percentage of duplication, and distribution of serial and monographic formats in each subject section of the collection. The resulting collection profile provides a multi-dimensional, quantified description of the collection using a different analytical approach than either a shelflist measurement or the RLG Conspectus.