The binding of periodicals into hard covers is an important part of any library's long-term collection development. Binding preserves the titles physically and allows for more efficient storage on library bookshelves.
My department is responsible for this process. Every three weeks we send "lots" consisting of one hundred fifty journal titles to be bound by our bookbinder, ACME Bookbinding, a company located in Charlestown, Massachusetts.
Because titles sent to the bindery are in "access Limbo", a resource must be provided for patrons and other users so that they know what materials are missing from the collection in the short term. This also includes, to a much smaller extent, damaged books and journals that are repaired in-house. These we indicate as being on "Repair" in ThomCat under "Current Location."
The standard policy at Scott Memorial Library for titles shipped to ACME has been to provide a printed form which lists, alphabetically, those titles which are currently unavailable for use. Copies of this list have been kept traditionally at both the Reference and Circulation desks.
A project was recently completed to provide this information in an easy to use online format within the Library's homepage. Reference Librarian Margaret Grasberger, JEFFLINE Editor Ann Koopman, and Preservation Technician Ron P. Swegman worked on separate parts of the task. These included: importing lot title information from the bookbinder's ABLE Database, creating macros in Microsoft Word that formatted the document and eliminated extraneous symbols, and finally, creating an HTML document that could be posted onto the Web.
