Periodicals

To decide what is the best practice for your situation when dealing with periodicals, you must first make the decision of what you are going to do with them. 

• Do you plan to archive the copies so that students have a hard copy to use when doing research or are you planning to discard them at the end of the year?

• Do you want to circulate all issues to anyone who wants to read them or do you plan to circulate the copies only on a limited basis such as teachers only.

With these questions in mind, realize that your decisions will have an impact on several areas of Alexandria -- Subscriptions, Cataloging, Policies, System Preferences and Circulation.  In all cases, using the Subscriptions module to track the receipt of all periodical issues provides a fast and effective way to manage your subscriptions records.

Treating Periodicals as Temporary Items

If you have an online magazine service such as EBSCO, you may not wish to keep the hard copies of your magazines, so, cataloging would be wasted labor.  In this case, checking periodical issues out using temporary barcodes makes perfect sense.

• Set up a Temporary Items policy with No Loan Period, then, use the Exceptions mode pairing this policy to certain patron groups to allow them to check out these items if you do not want to circulate your periodicals to all patrons.

• In System Preferences (System Administration group), click on Barcodes and select the Temporary Barcodes tab.  Set the Default Policy to the Temporary Items policy.

• On the same tab, set your Temporary Barcode range.  Print these barcodes and affix them to manila envelopes.  These manila envelopes will be used to hold the periodical (or any other temporary item) that is being checked out.

• To check out a periodical, place the periodical inside a manila envelope and scan the temporary barcodes, then fill out the fields on the Temporary Item window.

• Make sure the patrons know that the items must be returned in the envelopes in order to clear them from their records.

Treating Periodicals as Part of the Permanent Collection

If you are planning to archive your periodical issues, you will need to decide whether you wish them to be done as separate items or copies under the title.  For some titles such as Zoobooks that have a single topic for each issue, cataloging those periodical issues as individual items with the title of the issue as the title of the item is a viable alternative to cataloging them as copies of the periodical title and making each issue's topic part of a contents note.  Cataloging most periodical issues as copies of a title is probably the preferable method to use since it causes less "catalog clutter" than having them as separate item titles in your database.

• Establish a Periodicals policy and use the policy Exceptions mode to give checkout privileges to specific groups of patrons if you do not intend to circulate the periodicals to all patrons.

• If you are planning upon using the Add Copy to Existing Title in the Subscriptions, you may want to catalog your periodical titles even before you receive the first issue.

• Set up your periodical subscription records in the Subscriptions module with the Upon Receipt drop-down menu set either to Add New Title and Copy or Add Copy to Existing Title.

• As an issue is received, use the E command in Circulation or, in the Subscriptions module, click on the Actions menu icon (gear) and select Receive Issue.

• Your title should be highlighted in the Browse Items by Title, click on Select if the correct title is highlighted, otherwise, find your title and, then, click on Select.

• If the barcode is not correct, change it.  Adjust the Call Number, if desired, and enter volume and issue information in the Volume field.  Click on Save.

Quick Cataloging Trick

If you are going to catalog your periodicals, the following trick will allow you to do all your issues for the year for all periodicals at once.  This will enable you to print all barcode labels (and spine labels, if you want them) at one time.

• Go to Edit and select System Preferences.

• Click on Site Information in the System Administration category.

• Turn on Autosave by clicking the box for Automatically Save when Closing/Deactivating a Window and turn off Autolock by removing the check from the Database Management Windows Locked by Default.  This will enable you to browse from one copy to the next easily and quickly when changing the volume.

• Catalog the item title first — maybe even go so far as to have the year as part of the title. Add the number of issues you expect to receive that year by adding the first copy  (Add Copy under the Actions menu (gear) icon at the top of the Item Record pane) and, then, duplicating that copy (Duplicate under Actions menu icon at the bottom of the Items List) for the number of issues you will be receiving.  Make certain that you select the Duplicate Copy option or you will be duplicating the title in error.

• Modify the copy volume with the issue information (month, year; month, day, year; volume and issue #; etc) for each copy. * 
  
  

• Print the barcodes and have them on hand ready for when you receive the issues.  This will mean that you are using full sheets of labels instead of just a few at a time which causes a great deal of waste.

• Put the barcodes on all the copies you have received.

• Bring up the On Order patron (barcode 5) and check out all the copies you haven't received yet. (NOTE:  You may want to set your Auto-Hide preferences in the Researcher preferences of System Preferences to automatically hide copies checked out to On Order.)

• When you have a new copy come in, put on its barcode (it's already cataloged), and Bookdrop it.  Then, add a note on the History tab for that subscription in the Subscriptions module to indicate the date that it was received.

• Use the E command to make sending in missing issues claims easily.

*  If you are really good with Excel, once the barcodes are in, you could make Excel figure out your month/ year or month/day/year volumes for you and just import them.