Serials Selection

Abstract

This paper will consider some relatively unorthodox, fairly bibliographically free aspects of magazine selection an approach in the worst tradition of the essentially fact-for-fact oriented library literature. However, anyone seeking orthodox information about indexes, abstracts or access to bibliographical information on magazines is referred to WinchelFs Guide to Reference Books where it is all put precisely and accurately. In a more discursive readable fashion, William Huff has achieved much the same thing in his exellent article "Periodicals" in the January 1967, issue of Library Trends. Also, in my book, Magazines for Libraries, one will find a relatively exhaustive general and subject bibliography to the field. Discussing what he terms a psychograph of adolescent rebellion, Bruno Bettelheim states that today's youth are frustrated "because modern technology has made them obsolete they have become socially irrelevant and, as persons, insignificant." 1 Much the same might be said of the present art of magazine selection. Technology, from the "until forbidden" order to reliance on indexes and computerized records apparently has made much of the process obsolete. Large libraries, at any rate, now no longer select as much as collect. In so doing, it seems to me, they have made the magazine socially irrelevant, at least to all but a small, highly selected segment of the community.