For years the PLL (Periodicals Location List) has been used by faculty and students to find locally held journals and magazines. Not only does the PLL lists the journals and magazines held by the library, it also lists where and in what format those journals may be found, whether in print, microfilm or microfiche. That list has now been updated and completely revamped this year.

With the advent of NC-LIVE and other electronic sources of full-text journals, one might wonder why the PLL is still needed. The simple answer is not every journal listed in NC-LIVE is in full-text. There are still times when the only way to obtain a needed journal article is from a copy here in the the library and to find that journal, one would consult the PLL.

The Internet and NC-LIVE have brought about a great number of changes to the Library's journal holdings and consequently in the PLL. A number of titles that the library did subscribe to are now in electronic format only while in other cases the library retains the print title even though it may be found electronically. Also, over the years, the journal titles the library holds changes to best suit the needs of students and faculty. Last year, in order to make it more useful for those searching on NC-LIVE, the PLL was added to the library's web-site.

Since last year, not only have a number of titles changed, but the library staff saw a need to make the PLL even more responsive to the needs of patrons trying to match citations on NC-LIVE with what is held here. To that end, the following changes have been made:

• The PLL is now in HTML format rather than in Adobe Acrobat. This allows the PLL to be updated faster than had been previously possible and is much easier to read. The PLL is also easier to navigate and loads faster. There is also no longer a need have the Acrobat Reader on one's computer to use the PLL.
• The Collection Development Librarian, Mr. Richard Pipes, has reorganized the PLL so that holdings of a given title are listed by date rather than by location. Before now, if one wanted, say, Time from July 31, 1978, one would have to check the listings for the closed stacks and microfilm before seeing that it was in microfiche.
• Mr. Pipes has also provided references to electronic editions of titles that are held locally. These are linked the the NC-LIVE index of full-text titles.

Updated August 14, 2008