Serials are published at regular intervals and the publication is intended to continue indefinitely. Besides scholarly journals and popular periodicals, serials include magazines and all other periodical publications as newsletters, newspapers, annual reports, proceedings of learned bodies, monograph series etc. the term serial control usually denotes two very distinct aspects: bibliographic control and processing control. Bibliographic control of serials involve preparation and maintenance of a central master list of all serial publications which includes full title, short title, variation form earlier titles, publishers, ISSN, frequency etc. Serials processing control comprises of acquisition, claims controls, cataloguing, circulation, binding, weeding out etc.

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 The  purpose  of  a  good  automated serials control system may be summarized as     follows:

 

• To have effective and efficient control over subscription, renewal and cancellation of serials

 

• To record and maintain current as well as serials holdings data accurately

 

• To provide accurate information about funds required and committed as subscription to serials

 

• To provide necessary management information reports, whenever required

 

• To  reduce  labour  and  time  consuming  work  involved  in manual  serials  control systems

 

• To have a good control over receipt of individual issues of journals, reminder for non-receipt of journal titles, binding and related activities

 

 Fully-developed serials control module can accommodate a broad range of routines   required for automating     serials acquisition and management including the followings:

 

• Input of serials data

 

• Ordering: ordering of new journals, and renewal / cancellation of existing journals, handle approvals (approved and rejected journal titles)

 

• Receipt: Receipt of individual issues of journals

 

• Claims Monitoring: Sending reminders for missing issues of journals

 

• Routing and circulation of individual issues of journals

 

• Holding Information: With information about complete volumes, volumes with missing issues and missing volumes

 

• Services: List of periodicals received in a month fortnight/week, list of periodical renewed / added, list of periodicals cancelled, report on serials holding

 

• Management service: Keeping track of amount spent on subscriptions, binding of volumes and holding information, etc.

 

• Queries Handling: Queries pertaining to new serials, renewal of serials, their receipt, vendors, their performance, recent arrivals, etc.

 

• Report generation: report on missing issues, complete volumes, binding orders, accession register for bound volumes, budget and expenditure analysis