ABSTRACT
A complaint often voiced by librarians and others concerned with serials is that there are too many of them, not only too many new titles being published each year but also too many titles currently available. On the surface this may seem a curious complaint when there are considerably more monographs published and in print. It has substance, however, when looked at in terms of cost. The average serial subscription is often considerably more costly than the average monograph. For users of serials, accessibility is vital, and consideration needs to be given to the effect on users of library policies and procedures. Acquisitions budgets for serials may be stretched further by resource sharing and co-operative purchasing arrangements between libraries. Microforms are increasingly used for preservation, apart from their value in space saving. The future of microform is clouded by the potential storage capabilities of the new disc technologies.
