There once was a librarian who lived in a shoe…

The job of a serials librarian is like being the parent to a thousand wayward children. If you are being asked to juggle serials among your other duties this headache quickly turns into a migraine. Beyond a good Electronic Records Management (ERM) system, Transfer is another tool that can help.

Sponsored by the National Information Standards Organization (NISO), it helps you keep track of the migration of scholarly journals from one publisher to another, which would be a nightmare without Transfer. NISO begins by maintaining The Journal Transfer Notification Database where librarians can search using title, keyword, or ISSN. Even more helpful for busy librarians is the Transfer Alerting Service (TAS). Librarians should register to be on the Transfer Notification List, so that they will be notified with an alert from NISO whenever a journal transfer is announced.

This may not seem like news, but last fall NISO rolled out enhancements to its TAS. So, what is new? TAS is on a new platform and has a new URL: https://journaltransfer.issn.org. It now also offers features to track successive transfers and statistics, without losing any of it search, browse or API functionality.

The other big news is that version 4 of the Transfer Code of Practice is on its way. For more details visit: https://www.niso.org/standards-committees/transfer If you’re interested in a sneak peek, here is a DRAFT version released late in 2018: https://groups.niso.org/apps/group_public/download.php/20132/NISO%20Transfer%20RP-24-201x%20for%20Public%20Comment.pdf

Understanding Transfer and backing publisher endorsement is worth the effort because it benefits the sanity of librarians; with so many children they don’t know what to do.