The State of the Union (List)

I’ve been working on periodical changes this month, so I thought that I’d give everybody a little overview of the sometimes awkward, always entertaining dance that is periodical holdings. Stop me if you’ve heard this all before.

You can check our periodical holdings in three places: our catalog, the college-wide periodical list, or the union list, otherwise known as the Georgia Libraries Journal List (GOLD) (access through GALILEO). My first choice is always our catalog and, no, that isn’t biased (not entirely, anyway). The catalog, beyond a shadow of a doubt, contains the most current information of these three sources. Here’s why.

When I am sent periodical change reports, I enter those changes into the catalog and GOLD simultaneously. The GOLD database that I can access through a software program called Passport is constantly updated. The GOLD database that the public can access is only updated twice a year, at the end of June and December. Any changes received after those dates will be in GOLD limbo until the next update. Now, I’m not knocking GOLD. We’re good pals. We hang out. I went to his kid’s graduation. For ILL, he’s the bee’s knees; but if you want to know if we have volume 90 of Field & Stream, the catalog is your man. GOLD’s cool with that. He isn’t the jealous type.

And what of the college-wide list, you say? Well, that is generated, by an automated report, after each GOLD update, meaning in early July and January. So, any changes received after one GOLD update and before the next, are not on the college-wide list. (Also, we’ve recently discovered that the report used to generate the college-wide list has some eccentricities of it own, sometimes resulting in a confusing display, but that’s a whole different nest of wiener dogs.)

On a related note, everyone has sent me their changes, or promised me that they would, or told me that they can’t before the end of June; and I’m almost finished processing the ones I have, so John will be updating the college-wide list soon. Drop me a line if you have any questions, suggestions, etc.