Many libraries have ceased claiming print journals in recent years for a number of reasons and the idea has been raised at the University of Manitoba Libraries. Before making this decision we performed an analysis of the claiming process to determine whether claiming journals was a worthwhile cost in terms of staff time. We looked at both formal (monitoring collections on a weekly or monthly basis) and informal (missing issues reported by public or shelving staff) claiming, the cost in staff

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... e per claim, and the success of the claiming process. The results of this analysis will be discussed at this presentation. BACKGROUND The University of Manitoba Libraries (UML) is a medium-sized academic library serving a community of approximately 26,000 FTE. A member of both ARL and CARL, the UML has 19 libraries, including 8 hospital libraries. The staff at the hospital and main medical library have traditionally monitored their serials collections on a weekly or monthly basis and claimed any serials that were missing (which we will call formal claiming for our purposes). The other UML libraries have not monitored their collections but have reported issues as missing when discovered by the public or shelving staff (informal claiming).