Serials Acquisitions

Search Hints

• Searching is NOT case sensitive. You can use any combination of upper and lower case letters and it will not affect your search results.

• Search terms listed in sequence will be "ANDed" together automatically.

• It's sometimes better to search for only parts of words, rather than the entire word, and also to search by keyword. For example, if you're looking for Directory of U.S. labor organizations, a good search strategy would be dir lab org. It's only searching for the character string, and doesn't care about words or word order. However, be aware that your search terms are left-hand truncated; in other words, in the above example you can search for dir, but you can't search for tor and pick up the word directory.

• Abbreviations: In the interest of space, the Commitments database historically used abbreviations for some common words. These abbreviations were always used for these exact words. To find them, you must search using the abbreviations rather than the entire word. Remember, it's searching for the character string, so if you search for AM it will find every word that has the character string AM (amazon, amphibian, oxfam, and American). You can try including the period for searching something like American, which should theoretically bring better results but doesn't always. If you aren't finding what you want, try your search without using any of these words (use other keywords from your entry). We are slowly switching over to using full words instead of abbreviations. In the interim, you will have to search BOTH ways.

  AMERICAN	AM.	INSTITUTE	INST.
  ASSOCIATION	ASSN.	INSTITUTION	INSTN.
  BRITISH	BRIT.	INTERNATIONAL	INTL.
  CANADA	CAN.	LIMITED	LTD.
  COMPANY	CO.	MASSACHUSETTS	MASS.
  CONFERENCE	CONF.	NATIONAL	NATL.
  CORPORATION	CORP.	SOCIETY	SOC.
  DEPARTMENT	DEPT.	UNITED NATIONS	UN.
  GREAT BRITAIN	GT. BRIT.	UNITED STATES	US.
  INCORPORATED	INC.	UNIVERSITY	UNIV.

Reading Your Results

• Hits will be listed in alphabetical order by title. If they aren't, let Kim know (it means I forgot a step, and I can fix that.)

• Fields will be listed in the following order: PO, title, publisher, date publisher was last verified, country of publication (in parentheses), vendor, date order was last verified with vendor, order status, FYEnd (from deadones only), fund, type, format, [parent PO] (if the title is a comeon), library for which the title is cataloged, cost (either what we paid last year, or what we paid the last time we paid for it), Paid 2009, Paid 2008, Paid 2007, Paid 2006, and notes. If the title is coded as a membership, a field indicating "Membership: Yes" will display immediately before the Notes field. Three examples are:

  A00242: Air and space Smithsonian

  National Air and Space Museum [verified: 8/28/2003] (US)

  SBNJ-S [verified: 2/1/2007], Status: Active

  S-AER-AERO, J, P, Cat for Aeronautics Library

  Cost: $ 26.00,     Paid 2009: $ 26.00,     Paid 2008: $ 26.00,     Paid 2007: $ 24.00,     Paid 2006: $ 24.00

  D06360: Yale Law Journal

  YALE LAW JOURNAL [verified: 1/1/2008] (US)

  SBNJ-S [verified: 2/1/2007], Status: Cancelled

  S-DEW-LAW., J, P, Cat for Dewey Library

  Cost: $ 55.00,     Paid 2008: $ 55.00,     Paid 2007: $ 55.00,     Paid 2006: $ 55.00

  Canceled at the end of our current subscription period, 10/31/2008. C-SF 080716 epm. Confirmed that our order is canceled via email from Swets to Andrea on 8/22/08. [080827 rounds]

  RA1282: Photographic Resource Center. Institutional Membership

  Photographic Resource Center [verified: 1/1/2006] (US)

  PHOTOGRA-S, Status: Active

  S-RTC-ARVI, S, P, Cat for Rotch Library

  Cost: $ 45.00,     Paid 2008: $ 45.00,     Paid 2007: $ 45.00,     Paid 2006: $ 55.00

  Membership: Yes,     Membership Number: none,     Membership Type: Individual,     Renewal Month: January

  http://www.bu.edu/prc/

  http://www.bu.edu/prc/institutional.htm

  Bill To Address: Kate Gyllensvard - MIT Libraries - Rotch Room 14-0756 - 77 Masschusetts Ave - Cambridge, MA 02139

  Ship To Address: same

  Membership Benefits, as of January 2009 090107kpl k_plague:

  In the Loupe

  Membership should be renewed in December/January

  http://www.bu.edu/prc/forms/librarymembership.pdf

• Order
  PO numbers for serials are always six characters in length. They begin with a letter (sometimes two) which corresponds to the library that ordered the title, as follows:

  A = Aeronautics and Astronautics Library	N = Library Administration
  D = Dewey Library	Q = Acquisitions & Licensing Services (ALS)
  E = Barker Engineering Library	R = Rotch Library
  G = Cataloging & Metadata Services (CAMS)	S = Science Library
  H = Humanities Library	V = Archives
  L = Lindgren Library	W = Science Library (titles formerly in the Schering-Plough Library)
  M = Music Library

• Title
  Title can be something of a misnomer here. What you're really getting is the main entry for this title. For many things, this is just the actual title. But if you're dealing with things that have authors (like conference proceedings, some annual reports, etc.) you will also have the author as part of the main entry.

• Publisher
  Publishers are not generally entered according to standard cataloging rules. In this database, we are frequently tracking things by publisher, and though Elsevier may be known by many names to catalogers (Elsevier, Elsevier Science, Elsevier Science Publishing, Elsevier Science Inc., Elsevier Science Publishing Inc., etc.) we have chosen *one* form of the publisher's name to use in this database.

• PubCheck Date
  We check the publisher information against each publisher's price list every year. We do this mainly for journals, and mainly for the larger publishers.

• CTY (Country of Origin)
  Country of publication is noted at the time the title is cataloged, according to standard cataloging rules. As we are made aware of publisher changes and place of publication changes, this information is updated. Updates are not, however, made systematically but rather as we are alerted to them. If you have a question about a country code, please ask anyone in Serials Acquisitions for assistance.

• Vendor
  These are codes for the vendors (either subscription agents, book jobbers, publishers, or other suppliers) from whom we obtain these titles. Full vendor information is available in Barton.

• VenCheck Date
  Some of our larger vendors send us an annual list of what they think we have on order with them. We work on lists from our major vendors periodically to bring into line what they think we have on order with what our records say. The absence of a date on any other vendor just means we haven't worked systematically with that vendor yet to verify our lists.

• Status
  Most records in Commitments are Active, meaning that they are current orders. However, we do have some records in there for titles that have ceased or been cancelled during the current fiscal year. In the case of cancelled or ceased titles, there should always be a note explaining why the status is no longer active. At the end of each fiscal year, all cancelled and ceased titles are moved from the active Commitments database to the deadones database.

• FYEnd
  This field appears ONLY when searching the deadones database, and it represents the fiscal year in which the title was removed from Commitments.

• Fund
  The full fund is now listed here, and is searchable. For example, in the past you couldn't search for everything on your library's GENE fund because it would bring up all sorts of hits with GENE as part of the word, not to mention the titles on every other library's GENE fund. Now, you can do a search for, say, S-DEW-GENE and see all the titles ordered on that fund. [improvement made July 2004]

• Type
  We've made some changes to this field as of January 2008, and added three new Types. The full list of types is as follows: J = Journal; O = Numbered Monographic Series; U = Unnumbered monographic series, or publisher series, or our "made up" series; P = Monograph in Parts; D = Databases; S = Standard Serial; N = Newspaper

• FMT (Format)
  P = Paper; F = Microfiche/Microfilm; C = CD-ROM / DVD; E = Electronic (Web versions)

  The Format field was added to the Commitments Database on July 22, 1998. You will see the codes noted above, as well as combinations of those codes. If there are combined codes in this field, such as PE, it means that the order contains titles of both types. Such occurrences usually happen with package or blanket orders.

• Comeon
  If a title is coming to us as a result of our order for another title, the PO number of the "parent" title will be recorded in the Comeon field for the child record. This frequently happens for blanket orders, packages, and memberships. For example, we would have an order for our membership in the American Society of Whatever. As a result of that membership, we get their annual membership directory, their newsletter, and three journals that they publish. All five of those titles would be considered "comeson" titles, and would be listed in the commitments database as separate records, all pointing back to the "parent" order to show how much we paid for them.

• Cat for [Library]
  Usually, you can tell in which library a title belong by the first letter of the PO. In some cases, though, the library that purchases the title may not be the library in which the title resides. A good example of this is titles purchased out of the networked resources fund (where using the PO logic the library would be N), or titles purchased on a blanket order like the UN, where Dewey pays for the order but some of the titles are housed at Rotch or Humanities.

• Cost
  This is the amount of money expended against this order in the previous fiscal year OR the last fiscal year in which the order was paid. If the amount listed is $0.00, it is a free title or it is a free with print ejournal. If the amount listed is $0.01, it means that the title is paid for as part of a payment to another title, and you should see the record for the PO listed in the Comeon field for the cost of all the related titles together.

• Paid 2009, etc.
  The Paid 2009, Paid 2008, etc. fields show you the amount expended against this order during that fiscal year. If no money was expended in a given fiscal year, the label for that year doesn't show at all. For detailed payment information, see Barton, use the Payment History Query (requires Brio Query 6), or ask someone in Serials Acquisitions.

• Membership
  If the title is coded as a membership, you will see "Membership: Yes." Note that non-memberships are not coded as No, the field is just left blank.

• Membership Number
  If the title is coded as a membership (Membership:Yes) and we know what our membership number is, it will show here.

• Membership Type
  If the title is coded as a membership (Membership:Yes) and we know what type of membership we hold (e.g., Associate, Institutional, etc.), it will show here.

• Renewal Month
  If the title is coded as a membership (Membership:Yes) and we know in which month the membership should be renewed, it will show here.

• URL and URL for Benefits
  If the title is coded as a membership (Membership:Yes) and we know the URL of the organization and the URL at the organization's site where benefits of membership are listed, both URLs will show here.

• Bill To address and Ship To address
  If the title is coded as a membership (Membership:Yes) and we know what the organization thinks are our billing and shipping address, they will show here. If they are the same, one of the fields will say "same."

• Notes
  Notes are always available for titles that have ceased publication or been cancelled during the current fiscal year. Occasionally, they are also available for other titles. Membership Benefits will be listed in this field if the title is coded as a membership (Membership:Yes).

Last updated February 9, 2009