[Yulcat-l] Fwd: LC series decision

[Ellen Jaramillo]

fellow catalogers--
i'd like to share with you a recent posting on the "Latin Americanist 
Librarians' Announcements List" concerning LC's decision to eliminate 
SARs.  the author, Lief Adelson, is the founder/president of one of the 
major book dealerships in Mexico, and while he is talking from the vendor's 
perspective i think that his comment that this decision will occasion 
"greater resource disparities" is on the mark.


Concerning the question of LC's decision to cease providing controlled 
series access, I'd like to add my perspective:

         Let me see if I have this right.  Let's forget that publications 
can be a part of a numbered monographic series.  Is that the essence of the 
proposal put forth by LC when it announces that it will cease providing 
controlled series access?  And their alternative is to stick series 
information into the untraced 490 field?

         Here's a comment from a non-cataloger, indeed, from a 
non-librarian.   As a book vendor, I provide many institutional libraries 
with Mexican publications based on the criteria that they pertain to one of 
several thousand series.  In other words, we use series information 
extensively to make sure that our customers do not end up with gaps in 
their collections.  Is this no longer a concern for research libraries?

         Additionally, several bibliographers have astutely requested me to 
send monographs belonging to numbered series on invoices separate from 
approval plan invoices.  Why?  Because they can use separate funds for 
paying for series publications and thus relieve some pressure from their 
already stressed approval plan budgets.  If controlled series access is no 
longer available, at least one major academic institution in the western 
part of the US is going to have to rethink its strategies for funding the 
acquisition of Mexican publications, because it will be in even more 
serious trouble than it is now.

         The amount of work involved in maintaining accurate series 
authorities files is enormous.  As a book dealer operating in Mexico I am 
frequently frustrated and confounded by publishers who alter series names 
and numbering schemes in their publications without warning, sometimes 
inadvertently.  To acknowledge, register and verify this information is 
time consuming and costly, especially in a US academic/institutional 
environment.   I remember a time when there was a US library ethic of 
shared costs and benefits among the entire community.  What has happened to 
this ideal?  I believe that an attitude of strict economic cost/benefit 
analysis among individual members of the community will eventually lead to 
a generalized 'poverty of quality' and to greater resource disparities 
among the whole.

         --S. Lief Adleson

  S. Lief Adleson
  Books From Mexico
  e-mail: lief at booksfrommexico.com
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