Making Waves: New Serials Landscapes in a Sea of Change

Citation

Kidd, T. (2003), "Making Waves: New Serials Landscapes in a Sea of Change", Library Review, Vol. 52 No. 5, pp. 235-236. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530310476779

This compilation consists of the papers presented at the 15th Annual Conference of NASIG, the North American Serials Interest Group Inc, held at the University of California San Diego from 22‐25 June 2000. Potential purchasers should be aware that it has simultaneously been published as Vol. 40 No. 1/2 and No. 3/4, 2001 of The Serials Librarian.

The NASIG annual conference, and the UK Serials Group (UKSG) conference held annually in April, are probably the premier opportunities for members of the serials community – intermediaries and publishers, as well as librarians – to get together to exchange experiences, to make contacts, and to increase their awareness of new developments, problems and solutions in the serials world. There are of course other gatherings, for example sessions organised by the American Library Association and other library associations, and the meetings of ICOLC, the International Coalition of Library Consortia, twice yearly in North America, and annually in Europe, but these either fulfil more specialised functions, or are not so wide‐ranging as the NASIG and UKSG conferences, which each attract more than 500 delegates every year.

The volume under review, over 450 pages including a list of conference registrants and an index, covers preconference programmes, plenary sessions, concurrent sessions, workshops (about half of the total pagination), and poster sessions. It is unlikely that any person, apart from, no doubt, the editors, will read a compilation like this from cover to cover – your reviewer has to confess that he did not quite manage this feat – but these proceedings are still a vital source for all those professionally interested in this area. This applies equally to delegates needing a reminder, or information on some of the concurrent sessions or workshops they missed, or those from North America or elsewhere who were unable to attend the conference. Speedy publication is vital in this fast‐changing world, and it is good to see that a Web version is also available (as part of The Serials Librarian), with its own Web Edition Editor.

It is very difficult for these large annual conferences to have a coherent theme, and the catch‐all title of these proceedings indicates that there is no real attempt to do this here, but most current issues are covered by one paper or another. The bewildering variety of topics ranges from visionary crystal ball gazing into “the future” to much more specific papers on OhioLINK, the ISSN, PubMed Central, the Open Archives Initiative, SPARC, BioOne, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, etc. In addition to the usual large number of papers on electronic journals, their origins, coverage, costs, and future development path, there is also a surprising – in a UK context – concentration on various aspects of serials cataloguing. To indicate the kind of use to which this volume is likely to be put – responding to a particular need – I was unexpectedly interested in a number of papers and workshop reports on serials holdings records and the MARC Format for Holdings Data (MFHD), given a requirement at our library to look more closely at implementing this (and given the forthcoming implementation of a UK Serials Union Catalogue, SUNCAT).

All in all, this publication provides a very useful snapshot of the concerns of serials practitioners at a particular point in time, and will provide some enlightenment to those seeking further information on most relevant issues.