Service

Kuhn, Warren B.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/1578 Copy

Description

Title

Service

Author(s)

Kuhn, Warren B.

Issue Date

1969

Keyword(s)

Serials control systems

Abstract

In ancient Greece King Augeas was the ruler of Elis who had difficulties with his housekeeping. By skillful attention to an acquisition program with his bulls zestfully engaged in their own activities, he had managed to accumulate immense herds, but somehow never got around to cleaning his stables. By the time Hercules was given the task of policing the area, the Augean establishment was overflowing with thirty years of deposit collections. Good King Augeas and his stables kept returning to mind as I considered my topic for this paper: the problems of arranging and servicing a large serial collection. Even more than other aspects of libraries, the serial and periodical collections present a vast and seemingly immmovable presence. Once processed, our busy attention to them, like that of Augeas, has often been diverted elsewhere. Unfortunately, while Hercules had the River Alpheus to help him cleanse the stables, our torrent of proliferating periodicals and serials pours in at a new flood level each year and never runs out again! Being no Hercules, I have concentrated on only a few considerations of serial service in our Augean establishments that seem to me to warrant special attention. First, let me try to assuage the feelings of those who have already reacted to my implication that librarians have not been handling periodicals as well as they might. I have no doubt librarians' hearts are Herculean in the desire to be of service, but their attempts have, as yet, not been overly effective. I say as yet because there are current developments which promise help, some of which librarians have initiated, and many of which they must begin to more actively investigate and try.

Publisher

Graduate School of Library Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Series/Report Name or Number

Allerton Park Institute (16th : 1969)

ISSN

0536-4604

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1578

Copyright and License Information

Copyright owned by Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 1969.

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