House Organs

Supplementing In-House Organizations with Contract Maintenance... 

Manpower Labor Contracts. Some faciUties prefer a strict manpower contract that suppHes skilled or unskilled labor as requited to fill ia and supplement an existing workforce. Arrangements can be made at the outset for temporary workers to be hired by the faciUty, if the need for thein service continues and they fit well iato the ia-house organization. 

Givaudan, in the January, 1979, issue of their house organ (2),gives an appreciative nontechnical introduction to the subject which concludes with this passage ... 

B nai B rith was a straightforward covert intelligence front for the Montefiores and Rothschilds. Its American house organ, the Menorah, could not disguise its relationship to the Rothschilds. It chose to flaunt it ... 

COMPANY NAME Phytobotanica UK Ltd, Mill House Organic Medicinal and... 

In this connection, a work of possible value is the Directory of House Organs (20), a work listing more than 6329 titles in 1954. The arrangement is by title (alphabetical) and by sponsor (both alphabetical and geographical). A symbol indicates the user as internal, external, or both. Titles of special chemical interest must be inferred from the name or the sponsor. An earlier work by Groves (JO) dealt with British house organs. 

Groves, F. R., House Organ Handbook and Review, Institute of House Organ Editors, London, 1939. 

Printers Ink, Directory of House Organs, Printer s Ink Publishing Co., New York, 1947. 

House Organs and Trade Publications as Information Sources... 

First, let us consider what house organs and trade publications are. Their primary objective is to sell products. They are a method of selling by providing a point of contact with a prospective customer. This point of contact, if successful, provides the prospective customer with information. In this sense, house organs and trade publications must be considered as advertisements. Basically, we are concerned with two categories of advertisements action and good will. The action advertisement attempts to induce an immediate response... 

From the advertising viewpoint, the information communicated by house organs and trade publications may be classified in four types ... 

From the information viewpoint, house organs and trade publications are potentially important sources 4-8). Yet many scientists and librarians regard this segment of the chemical literature with the impatience and doubt best described by the doggerel verse ... 

If house organs and trade publications are valuable and important information sources, why have they been relegated to an inconsequential position in so many libraries The real problems posed by house organs and trade publications are how to get them, and what to do with them once they are received. 

House organs and trade publications, even when ordered selectively and judiciously, do not constitute an information source until a logical processing system is adopted and a key is provided for the valuable or useful part of the contents. 

An excellent discussion and evaluation of house organs issued by pharmaceutical companies was published by Maurice (9). Ledermans list of house organs of interest to the chemical industry, broken down by subject interest and by type of house organ—for example, review or abstract—provides the chemical field with a nucleus for starting a file of house organs. The list appended to this paper is based on the Lederman list with revision and extensions in several areas. 

Another helpful list, given by Royer (12), is based on the house organs received by the Technology Division of the Cleveland Public Library. A useful feature of Royer s list is that the house organs which have been of greatest help in answering reference questions are noted with an asterisk. 

Other ways by which we can learn of new house organs are good communication among libraries and between librarians and scientists within a given environment. A good system for spotting trade publications also uncovers leads to new house organs. 

We should approach the obtaining of house organs, however, with a subdued enthusiasm. There is no merit in obtaining them all. Furthermore, both house organs and trade publications are expensive to produce. Many issuing companies have an imderstandable reluctance to distribute these publications to squirrels. On the other hand, they are extremely happy to send them where, from the advertiser s viewpoint, they will do some good. 

The responsibility for obtaining, processing, and circulating house organs should be assigned to a librarian, preferably one educated in the subject knowledge most important to the environment. This qualification is necessary if house organs... 

An efficient approach to this problem is to separate the house organs worthy of consideration into those equivalent to journals and those equivalent to trade publications in terms of content. The house organs considered equivalent to journals then should be given the necessary time and attention. They should be included with the journals in evaluation of articles for the internal literature abstracting service and for the file of articles of importance to a company s products, processes, and fields of interest. Retention schedules must be established in much the same manner as for journals. A few house organs will be bound. The important articles in those not bound should, of course, be clipped and retained in some accessible form. House organs adjudged to be equivalent to trade publications should be so treated. 

As with house organs, the responsibility for obtaining, processing, and circulating trade publications should be assigned to the librarian. In this way we can be assured of a complete file of all needed material and one which is controlled for the best interests of all. A convenient way to file trade publications is by company, and, if necessary, further classification of each company by department or division. To afford the circulation librarian a convenient system for charging out trade publications, each publication of a company should be assigned an accessions number. 

The house organs in this list are classified in three general categories I, those equivalent to journals II, those containing mainly advertising material and III, those primarily published for employees and stockholders. The list is submitted as a guide and not as a comprehensive compilation. 

---