Processing Newspapers

Overview

The library subscribes to a small number of newspapers which come by mail. (Mail delivery means that we never have "today's" newspaper.)

Newspapers are delivered by the mailroom daily; they are placed in a bin on the processing table. When mailroom staff are absent, the Serials Unit must send someone to the mailroom to collect the newspapers.

Serials Unit student workers note the issues received, prepare the newspapers for the shelf, and place them on the newspaper rack in the Current Periodical Room.

The Checkin Technician updates the checkin record in Millennium to record the receipt of each newspaper.

In the absence of student help, the Checkin Technician completes all steps of this process.

Materials Required

• Long armed and/or standard stapler

• Red magic marker

• Date stamp

• Newspaper List (newspapers received and their shelf numbers -- located in folder)

Procedure

1. Remove and discard all advertising inserts and duplicates.

Sometimes duplicates have other campus addresses; these should be returned to the mail room.

Discard any newspapers not on the list.

Sometimes other periodicals that are not processed as newspapers arrive in the newspaper bin. Make sure these are forwarded to the Checkin Technician and are not discarded. Examples are:

• TLS Times Literary Supplement

• Providence Visitor

• Providence Business News

• Barron's

Some newspaper supplements (e.g. magazines) are processed, numbered, shelved, and discarded along with the papers they come with. Examples are the magazines that come with La Stampa and Süddeutsche Zeitung.

However, other supplements are checked in separately as periodicals and should be forwarded to the Checkin Technician.

These include:

• New York Times Magazine

• New York Times Book Review

• New Times (comes with Izvestiia occasionally)

• Russian journals that come with Izvestiia

2. Stamp the papers with the current date so patrons can see when we actually received the paper.

3. Using a red marker, mark the rack number (found on the Newspaper List) at the top of each issue.

4. Staple the corner of each newspaper (on an angle so the paper can be read more easily).

Use the long-armed stapler for thick papers. Thin papers can be stapled with a regular stapler. Very fat papers (e.g. the Sunday New York Times) can be stapled in sections.

5. Record your initials and today's date at the top of the Newspaper List. (Use a new sheet each day.) For each newspaper processed, record the date(s) of the issues received. When you're finished processing the newspapers, give this list to the Checkin Technician.

6. Take the newspapers to the Current Periodical Room and place the most recent issue on the newspaper rack. Transfer the older issues to the appropriate newspaper bins.

Here is a video illustrating the process: