Thank you all for your thoughts on this issue. You have given me much to
think about. I still haven't made a decision, but I do have a list of
magazines on the website
http://in.sjprep.org/lib/
Original question:
I am wondering if I am crazy to want to do this and would like your
advice/comments/suggestions.
I would like to add our magazines to the catalog (we use Follett Circ +).
They do not circulate. Right now the only way to know what magazines we
have is to come in the library and browse the shelf. And you wouldn't
necessarily know that we have two years worth of most in a back room.
I am a new librarian. My paraprofessional does not believe this is at all
necessary.
I will at least put up a list of magazines on the website.
Your thoughts?
Thank you,
Sonia Nelson, Librarian
St. Joseph's Prep
Philadelphia, PA
Answers (in no particular order):
We place our magazines in the Follett catalog for checkout purposes. We
enter
the title (Newsweek as ex) as the title, select the "periodicals" option,
and
then the individual isses are "copies" with the date of the individual
magazine
being the call number.It works great for us that way.
In high school I can definitely see the
benefits of cataloging them, students may be able to use some titles for
research. I am in a K-6 school (my first year also) and I quick catalog
most of
my magazines just to aid in circulation. Certain titles however that have a
specific theme (i.e. Calliope, Footsteps, Appleseeds, Odyssey) and have just
one
main topic per issue are cataloged so they can be accessed by subject.
I have been doing that for about 10 years. First in an elementary school,
now in high school.
You can find records on most titles. I put the magazines into a barcoded
holder, changing them when the new issue arrives. That tracks if we've
received them and tracks usage as well. You just update the issue to
"check them in" when they arrive.
I use Follett too. No problems- just be sure to set up your call prefix (I
just use "M" for magazine)
It may not be "necessary" but it sure helps track them and account for
where they are.
We are a K-5 library (actually I have three K-5
libraries) and we catalog all our magazines. We do not
however have all that many and most are monthly rather
than weekly. Just this AM I had a student looking for
a book on ostriches and the only thing we had was a
Zoobooks magazine which was just right for him. It
took me a bit to think of anywhere to look and about
the time I said "We have a Zoobooks!" they already had
it on the OPAC. We have great circulation on our
periodicals. We also have quite a few teacher
magazines and have added many subjects for each one.
New unit materials for teachers often include back
issues of magazines. I suspect by your school's title
that you are a school for older students. You might
find a service like EBSCO to be of more help. I would
never go through each issue of Newsweek, Time, U.S.
News, etc. and catalog it. For the time you would
spend cataloging all those magazines, getting EBSCO
would save you money!
We used to catalog our magazines until the circulation numbers dropped due
to
the increase in the use of online databases. Now we just put barcodes on
about
25 old library cards and scan one of those barcodes at checkout. When our
Follett system doesn't recognize the barcode, it asks if we'd like to add
it. We
say yes and chose "temporary copy" and enter the name of the magazine and
the
issue. That way we'll have something that will print out for overdues and
fines.
We also write the issue and the student ID number on the library card that
we
scanned the barcode from. Each card with a barcode is numbered at the top
and we
try to write that number next to the due date we stamp in the magazine so
it's
real easy to find the card when the magazine comes back. We really don't
have
that many that get checked out now so to us it's not worth the time of
processing and the cost of barcodes and labels....
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