Serials Management module

Description:

This module provides the ability to create and manage serial records, which provide mechanism to:

  • Create a serial record

  • Link a Purchase Order Line to a serial record

  • Create a publication pattern for a serial record including:

    • Recurrence rules (governing how often and on which days, an issue of the serial is published - e.g. 'Weekly publication, published on a Monday')

    • Issue ommission rules (governing any exceptions to the recurrence rules which leads to an issue to be omitted from the publication schedule - e.g. 'not published on the 25th December')

    • Issue combination rules (governing any situations where two or more issues are combined into a single physical issue - e.g. 'July and August issues combined into a single summer "July/August" physical issue')

    • Issue labelling based on enumeration and chronology rules (governing how each issue is labelled - e.g. '12 issues numbered 1-12 in a volume, 1 volume per year, labelled as "Vol. <vol number>, Issue <issue number>, <month> <year>"')

  • Generate a set of predicted issues for a period of time (usually 1 year) including all omissions, combinations and labelling

  • Use each predicted issue to create one or more receiving issues in the Acquisitions Receiving Module

Documentation:

API documentation:

https://dev.folio.org/reference/api/#mod-serials-management

Data migration

Recurrences

A recurrence in the Serials Management module governs the publication frequency rules for a serial. Recurrences are defined with the properties:

  • timeUnit (day, week, month or year) → the time unit to use for the publication frequency

  • period (an integer) → the number of time units to be used

  • issues (an integer) → the number of issues received during the period of time defined by the period and timeUnit

  • Recurrence rules → rules to calculate on which date an issue is published

So if you can write any frequency in terms of the number of issues per period of time like:

<issues> issues per <period> <timeUnit>

for example:

1 issue per 1 month becomes

"timeUnit": {"value": "month"}, "period": 1, "issues": 1

This flexibility means that for some options, there are multiple ways of expressing the same frequency (e.g. 1 per month, vs 12 per year). In cases where there are multiple options, the decision on which expression of frequency to use should usually be guided by which will give the most concise way of expressing the pattern including the dates/days of publication (see recurrence rules below). For guidance, some common frequencies and suggested recurrence JSON (omitting the recurrence rules which are discussed separately below) are given in this table:

Frequency

MARC frequency code (853$w)

Recurrence JSON

Notes

Frequency

MARC frequency code (853$w)

Recurrence JSON

Notes

Annual (one issue per year)

a

"timeUnit": {
"value": "year"
},
"period": 1,
"issues": 1



Bimonthly (one issue per two months)

b

"timeUnit": {
"value": "month"
},
"period": 2,
"issues": 1



Semiweekly (two issues per week)

c

"timeUnit": {
"value": "week"
},
"period": 1,
"issues": 2



Daily (one issue per day)

d

"timeUnit": {
"value": "day"
},
"period": 1,
"issues": 2



Biweekly (one issue per two weeks)

e

"timeUnit": {
"value": "week"
},
"period": 2,
"issues": 1



Semiannual (two issues per year)

f

"timeUnit": {
"value": "year"
},
"period": 1,
"issues": 2







"timeUnit": {
"value": "month"
},
"period": 6,
"issues": 1

Twice a year and once every six months can both be used to model a semiannual publication

Biennial (one issue per two years)

g

"timeUnit": {
"value": "year"
},
"period": 2,
"issues": 1



Triennial (one issue per three years)

h

"timeUnit": {
"value": "year"
},
"period": 3,
"issues": 1



Three times a week (three issues per week)

i

"timeUnit": {
"value": "week"
},
"period": 1,
"issues": 3



Three times a month (three issues per month)

j

"timeUnit": {
"value": "month"
},
"period": 1,
"issues": 3



Monthly (one issue per month)

m

"timeUnit": {
"value": "month"
},
"period": 1,
"issues": 1



Quarterly (four issues per year)

q

"timeUnit": {
"value": "year"
},
"period": 1,
"issues": 4







"timeUnit": {
"value": "month"
},
"period": 3,
"issues": 1



Semimonthly (two issues per month)

s

"timeUnit": {
"value": "month"
},
"period": 1,
"issues": 2



Three times a year (three issues per year)

t

"timeUnit": {
"value": "year"
},
"period": 1,
"issues": 3







"timeUnit": {
"value": "month"
},
"period": 4,
"issues": 1



Weekly (one issue per month)

w

"timeUnit": {
"value": "week"
},
"period": 1,
"issues": 1



Recurrence Rules

Recurrence rules are used to calculate on which specific days a serial issue will be published. A recurrence like "timeUnit": {"value": "month"}, "period": 1, "issues": 1  tells us there is one issue per month (12 per year), it doesn't specify which day of the month the issue will be published - this is where the recurrence rule is used.

Recurrence rules can have different levels of complexity depending on the recurrence specified. For example if a monthly serial issue is published on the same day of each month, the recurrence is "1 issue per month" and the recurrence rule only has to say which day of the month (1-31)  the issue is published. However, if the issue is published on a different day each month, or has a less regular pattern, the recurrence may need to be amended to allow the recurrence rule to be much more specific. The examples below should illustrate this more fully.

Examples tba here...