ABSTRACT
Between the ages of eighteen and thirty, the serials librarian’s customers go from a position of almost total ignorance of scholarly journals to being contributors within them. Customer service to students, often seen by serials librarians as being disruptive and apart from the more serious duties of their working life, is in fact, an opportunity for those librarians to participate in one of the central rites of passage of a young scholar. Students, who may well begin their awareness of journals with a mixture of annoyance and confusion, should be viewed as young voyagers. They are about to undertake an odyssey, which with the librarian’s help, can be made a little less frightening, and a little more rational. The end result will be increasingly confident adventures, in whose triumphs the librarian has a share.
