Journals/Serials Management

Serials are expensive, have a short shelf-life and often contain disparate material, making them difficult to promote and disseminate. They can be complex in structure, erratic in frequency and there are more published now than ever before. So how does the contemporary Resource Centre meet such challenges?

The Heritage Cirqa Serials Management Module is designed to take the strain out of looking after journal issues for you. Our challenge was to tackle the technical requirements of serials management without creating a system that only a specialist could use.

This module can be described in two distinct parts: Cataloguing and Management.

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Serials management in Heritage Cirqa

Cataloguing

Cataloguing serials can be broken down into three distinct levels: Titles, Issues and Articles.

• Title level deals with the publisher information, which tends to remain the same throughout the life of the serial.
• Issues level records the frequency of journal publication and some of the specifics of each release, e.g. issue sub-titles.
• Article level is concerned with cataloguing the content (articles) of each issue.

Abstracts for each article can be entered manually, or downloaded from a number of third party sources. If this is prohibitive, then keywords may be added so that users will find and identify specific articles as part of a normal Heritage Online search.

Management

The catalogued data is then used by the acquisitions facility to place, chase and receive journal orders. Heritage Cirqa takes care of all financial aspects of the ordering process, so that you can analyse expenditure and be sure to stay in budget.

Copies of journal issues can be circulated in the same manner as monographs, or via specially generated circulation lists.

The day-to-day tasks of dealing with journals are made simple in Heritage Cirqa, whilst still catering for the idiosyncrasies of publishers and suppliers who often change their publication patterns.  Subscriptions can be renewed automatically, or manually by the administrator. In short just about everything that could be required in this field is covered by Heritage Cirqa Serials Management.

Function List

Serials Cataloguing Module

• Cataloguing on three levels: Title, Issue and Article.
• Issue and article levels can be keyworded and abstracted - this increases the likelihood of journal usage.
• Images can be attached to issue and/or article records - this could include a scanned copy of important articles.

Serials Management Module

• Manages the whole journal subscription process, from creating a subscription order through to receipting.
• Manages multiple budgets - copies of the same journal can be ordered against different departmental budgets.
• Title information only needs to be entered once, automatic generation of issue records.
• Order chasing
• Complex issue frequencies handled - issues can be generated for infrequent, or occasional frequencies.
• Receipting can accommodate ad-hoc issue generation, deletions, merging and splitting issues.
• Supplements and notes can be added at any stage, but particularly at the receipts stage.
• Instructions can be added specifically to copy record for circulation stipulations.
• Circulation lists can be generated and printed to accompany issues (including label printing)
• Receipting is a logical and simple process which takes very little time.
• Heritage Cirqa can check for renewals on a regular basis to remind the librarian if subscriptions are coming to an end. Missing issues can be recorded so holdings information is kept up to date.
• Serials Management includes the standard Acquisitions Module free of charge.