Volume 25, Number 1
Jun 2001

Editor's Page

This newsletter is a sponsored publication, as anyone can see by the list of Year 2001 donors below—and all, or nearly all, are faithful and consistent.

We do our part by managing and increasing the income we have, as well as we can. The periodicals permit that we have worked so long to acquire seemed for a long while to be out of our reach, because the sorting of the envelopes prior to mailing is impossibly complex for a small organization like this, and there seem to be no short cuts. But we received an ad in the mail today from a company in Waco that sorts mail for people like us. I called, and they will do periodicals mailings. Now we have to check out their prices, services and requirements.

Because I have been offering higher wages lately, I have been able to hire more skilled and intelligent employees than before. However, this means that the subscription rates for this newsletter will have to rise soon, to cover the wage increase. It also means that we have been spending time and money promoting the Mold Reporter, so that it can pull its own weight. (I feel it has a great future, because the field is growing explosively.)

It's fun in a way being an executive, because then you get to make Executive Decisions that change the rules of the game and give you more control over things. For instance, we have been deluged with claims for v.24 #5 because it was erroneously numbered #4, and many serials clerks apparently never look at anything but the number. The subscription agents were even sending second claims for that issue, and it did no good to tell them that the subscribers already had it. So we just put all the claim notices into a pile and ignored them for a month.

Then I read an article about how publishers like us could just dump the subscription agents. We were on the verge of doing that with all of them, till a nice lady from RoweCom called this morning and told us we didn't have to dump them. We had a number of options, she said: We could give the agents a much lower percent of the subscription price than we do now (12%—she mentioned 3%); and we could deal directly with the subscriber on claims, which would be simpler; but the libraries could still have the convenience of ordering and renewing through the agents, which saves them time.

I can't wait to start. We'll be sending a letter to all institutional subscribers that now go through agents, and letting them know that they can either go direct, or go through their agent under the new conditions.

Ellen McCrady, Editor
July 9, 2001

A Thank-You to Supporters

Sponsors ($500+)

Gary Frost
Don Dunham, Library Binding Institute
Library Binding Service
Terry O. Norris
Preservation Technologies, L.P.

Patrons ($100-$499)

Joan T. Batchelor
William Fuller
David Diggs La Touche
Ralph & Christa Ocker
Ocker & Trapp Bindery
Roberta Pilette
Nancy Carlson Schrock

Contributors ($25-$99)

Heinke Pensky Adam
R. Tom Baldwin
Betsy Palmer Eldridge
Robert Feller
David B. Gracy, II
Carolyn Jane Gammon
Olivia Primanis
Carol Pratt
Mary Schlosser

Publication Schedule for AN

Volumes now begin in June and end in May. This issue (#1, June) has been delayed due to June's heavy conference and meeting schedule (Abbey Publications Board of Trustees, AIC, Mold Conference in Munich).

The annual publishing schedule looks like this:

No More Display Ads

We invited display ads from suppliers for Volume 24 (2000/2001), in order to increase our income. When we added up the printer's charges for printing these ads, however, we saw that the income they produced had been eaten up by the cost. Furthermore, the printer (Insty-Prints) never got them quite right, possibly because we did not know how to simplify the task for them. Live and learn. Perhaps the ads would have been successful both from the suppliers' point of view and our own, if the newsletter had had a much larger circulation.

Authors Please Take Note

Authors of articles and other contributions accepted for publication in the Abbey Newsletter will be assumed (unless they notify the editor otherwise) to be granting permission to publish their work in both print and electronic format, and to archive it and make it retrievable electronically. Authors retain copyright, however, and may republish their work in any way they wish.

Similarly with previous publishers of material who have given permission for their copyrighted material to be reprinted in the Abbey Newsletter. The permission will be assumed to cover the electronic as well as the printed form.

This policy has been adopted for two reasons: 1) It helps the cause of library and archive preservation, and 2) existing copyright law considers electronic reprints to be merely extra copies of the original publication, in another format.

The ABBEY NEWSLETTER: PRESERVATION OF LIBRARY & ARCHIVAL MATERIALS (ISSN: 0276-8291) is published six times a year with a separate index by Abbey Publications, Inc., 7105 Geneva Dr., Austin, TX 78723, and has about 1000 subscribers. Application to Mail at Periodicals Postage Rates is pending at Austin, TX 78752. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to the Abbey Newsletter, 7105 Geneva Drive, Austin, TX 78723.

Personal subscriptions are $35; institutional subscriptions are $65, and subscriptions for students are $20. Overseas air mail is $12/year. Checks and money orders should be made out in U.S. dollars, payable to Abbey Publications. Visa and MasterCard are also accepted.

Job advertisements are billed at the rate of $50 for the heading and the first ten lines, plus $2 per line thereafter. Any notice that is appropriate and newsworthy will be printed if there is room for it.

It is the policy of Abbey Publications to use permanent paper for all publications. Claims for issues never received will be honored within a year of publication.

The Editor's permission must be obtained before making more than 20 copies at a time of lengthy or signed articles. This lets us make any necessary corrections or updates, or contact other copyright holders for permission to reprint. Back issues from 1981 onward are on our Web page at http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byorg/abbey.

Abbey Publications is a nonprofit corporation set up to encourage preservation of written or recorded information, including the use of lasting materials in the creation of records. The corporation has five trustees (E. McCrady, G. Frost, R. Pilette, J. Wellvang, and T. Clareson) and five officers (E. McCrady, Pres.; G. Frost, 1st V.P.; J. Wellvang, 2nd V.P.; and C. Jensen, Treas.).