The Dawson Group, a UK serials subscription agency, demonstrated its standalone IBM PC-based Serials Management System at the National Online Meeting in New York in May. At the time this report went to press, the company had not announced whether it intended to market the system in North America, but it was obviously testing interest in the product.
The system supports ordering and cost analysis, renewals, check-in, claiming, and routing-with a temporary deletion facility to assist rapid circulation by ignoring recipients who are on vacation-prioritization and global change of routing recipients. The system can report orders, claims, and renewals electronically using standard ASCII communications protocols.
The minimum recommended configuration is an IBM PC MT with 512KB of memory and l0MB of disk storage, plus a printer and communications facilities as required. This configuration is judged to be capable of supporting 1,250 serial titles.
In Britain, the SMS software is priced £1,500 for Dawson clients and £2,000 for libraries which do not use Dawson' s subscription services. [Contact: The Dawson Group Serials Management Services Ltd., Cannon House, Folkestone, Kent CT19 SEE, England 0303-57421.]
