A lot of journals at UCL have typically been classified in the library alongside their respective book collections using the abbreviation “Pers” for “Periodicals”, e.g. HISTORY Pers or GEOSCIENCE Pers. Although convenient and short, it has not always been clear to either students or even library staff what “Pers” meant. There has long been a wish to change this to something like “Periodicals” and the Explore Advisory Group gave the go-ahead to this being done. I have now run a job on Alma to change call numbers so that they read as, e.g. HISTORY Periodicals or GEOSCIENCE Periodicals. I hope this is clearer for everyone who encounters journal call numbers.

Screenshot of Explore showing three call numbers ending in “Periodicals” for the journal Nature

While this job was being run, I took the chance to change UNASSIGNED Alma Locations to match the appropriate Library and alter the type of call number to “Other” to match most other local classification schemes in Alma. Call numbers with “PERIODICALS” in all-capitals have also been changed to “Periodicals”.

I know that there are still a number of anomalies to sort out, including journal holdings records where some minor coding errors caused them to be excluded, UNASSIGNED holdings where the call number does not include “Pers” or “Periodicals”, as well as a number of books- especially in the Main Library- which lack items and are also UNASSIGNED.

Thank you to Laura Sapsford in particular for help, advice, and a large amount of groundwork that was needed to sort out the UNASSIGNEDs in particular.