Serials resource sharing and public services

Abstract

Collection development activities have always had a significant impact on public services operations, but the impact is much more apparent today due to the fiscal constraints we face. No longer do we have sufficient resources at our disposal to purchase all the materials needed by our users; nor do we have the funds available to hire enough staff to service our users as we might like. In addition, we are running out of space to house our resources. Any decision made to address these problems has implications for public service. This became all the more apparent to us at Michigan State University while we were involved in an Office of Management Studies Public Services Study. The study team was charged only with reviewing our public services operations, yet they found it increasingly difficult to separate issues concerning services from those relating to the collection. Assisting library users with serials comprises a significant portion of the work of public services librarians and other staff members. The public services units at Michigan State provide bibliographic and physical access to the serials the library owns by providing instruction in the use of the card catalog, the serial holdings list, and periodical indexes; by creating serial records for the database we have loaded into our CLSI system (which is no easy chore); by staffing and servicing a current periodicals room; by providing faculty members with photocopies of journal articles from our collection; and by retrieving serials from our remote storage facility upon request. We also provide bibliographic and physical access to serials not in our collection by instruction in the use of indexes and in the use of OCLC and union listings (both online and printed), and by