| Collection
Development and Acquisitions
Acquisitions
Procedures for Faculty Printer-friendly
format
 Introduction
Basic
procedures
Turnaround
time
Rush
requests
International
orders
Out-of-print
titles
Periodicals
Finding the status of a request
Faculty
reimbursement for purchase of library
materials
Library
Liaisons
Final
note
The university’s librarians, faculty,
staff, and students request that the library acquire thousands of
books and media items every year, and the purchasing of these items
is done by the library’s Acquisitions Department. The
Acquisitions Department is managed by the Head of Collection
Development and Acquisition. Two staff members and four student
assistants carry out most of the daily work of the department.
Each Fall, department chairs receive a letter that details the amount
allocated by the library in that academic year for materials in that
subject area as well as important deadlines or changes in library
procedures.
Each academic department chair works "with department colleagues
and library liaisons" to contribute to the development of "a
strong library collection to undergird the teaching in the
department" (Faculty Handbook). The chair or a designate should work
to assure active participation of faculty within the department in
recommending the purchase of materials for the library in order to
build a balanced collection that meets student research and study
needs.
All teaching faculty may place requests for library materials
against the subject allocations. Requests must fit the library’s
Collection
Development Policy and are reviewed by the library’s
liaison for the subject before being ordered.
Faculty may place requests against the subject allocations, as
long as funds remain unencumbered, until April 1 of each year. If
funds are left after April 1, they become the responsibility of the
library liaison to spend out on the assigned subject area
before the end of the fiscal year. Faculty requests submitted to
liaisons after April 1 cannot be guaranteed to be placed before
the next fiscal year begins on July 1. In this as in all other
library matters, faculty are encouraged to communicate with their
library liaison to work out processes that are mutually
beneficial.
Faculty members send all requests for books and
media items that the library does not already own to their library
liaison, either by email (preferred) or campus mail.
Library order cards are no longer required. Check with your
liaison to work out a request process that is mutually
agreeable. Please do not submit requests for items the library might
already own or have on order. This information is kept up-to-date in
the Voyager online catalog, which can be checked quickly from any
computer with Internet access to the library’s home page, http://www.southwestern.edu/library/.
Electronic requests: The library has an online
Acquisition Request Form that will generate an email to your
liaison with your request. After you send the form, a "thank
you" page will be generated that you can print for your records.
Alternatively, you can send a regular email with a bibliography of
items you want to request directly to your liaison for
approval, or you can send a web link to a source catalog online.
Printed requests: The other way to submit a request is to
hand-deliver or campus-mail printed materials to your liaison.
Acceptable methods of submitting orders include clearly marked
publishers’ catalogs, printed or emailed bibliographies, or
printed Choice review cards. Send your requests to the library’s
liaison for your department for approval.
If you provide the library with publishers’ catalogs, flyers,
or other printed material that you need to have returned to you,
please clearly indicate that on every item that you want returned.
Individual items not so marked are recycled.
Required information: In order to place an order for an item that
the library does not own, the Acquisitions staff will need the author
and title. If you provide the year of publication, publisher, most
recent edition, or ISBN, that will streamline the process. Please
include a note if there is a vendor you know has the item for sale,
especially for foreign language or hard-to-find items (though the
library may choose an alternate vendor depending on discount rates,
fulfillment history, etc.).
Liaisons approve faculty requests and forward them to the
Acquisitions Department to be ordered. For each item, the
Acquisitions Department staff verifies the title’s existence,
availability, and price; assigns the most appropriate vendor; places,
claims, and receives the order; and forwards invoices to the Business
Office for payment. Much of this work is done online through the web,
in the library’s online acquisitions module, and in the
university’s purchasing system.
As soon as the item is ordered, it will appear in the
library’s online catalog, Voyager, with the designation "on
order." When it has been received in the building and is waiting for
processing, it will have the designation "in processing." Items that
are in processing can be requested by contacting a librarian for
assistance.
The time it takes to acquire and process an item
that has been requested for the library collection varies widely by
the type of material and other factors. We ask that you allow two
weeks for rush requests (see below). Some items, such as foreign
publications or certain out-of-print materials, can literally take
years to acquire. Paperback books often have to be bound before being
shipped, which can add several weeks to the turnaround time.
In all request fulfillment, our staff is dependent on the vendor
with whom we place the order, and once received here, items may have
to wait to be processed, as the flow of items into the library varies
over the course of the year. The librarians and library staff work
diligently to minimize turnaround time so that items can be on the
shelf and available to faculty and students as quickly as possible.
The department recognizes that sometimes an
oversight or unanticipated find can necessitate rush requests. Rush
requests will always be handled as quickly as possible. Our goal is
to fill rush requests within two weeks of receiving the request.
Please note these guidelines:
1. When a rush request is necessary, please provide as much
information about the item and where it might be available for
purchase as possible.
2. Please limit your rush requests, because they inevitably delay
the processing of other faculty requests, and because they are very
expensive: rush shipping costs are paid out of the book budget, so
every $15 overnight shipping charge effectively prevents the library
from purchasing another book.
3. If your need for a book by a certain date is absolute, consider
placing an interlibrary loan request for the item as a backup in case
we have difficulty finding a copy available for purchase.
The Acquisitions Department acquires not only
domestic imprints but also publications from other countries. There
are several ways that faculty (especially those teaching French,
German, Spanish, or Chinese) can help with the acquisitions process
for these materials.
Whenever possible, provide contact information for a domestic
vendor for every item. You might start with the department’s Staff
Links page, and look at our "Foreign Language Vendors" list.
Visiting the websites for these vendors will often allow you to
identify the specific in-stock edition that best suits your needs.
Providing us with detailed information about the edition and the
vendor that offers it is the best way to get the right book in the
collection as quickly as possible.
Our student employees and staff are not proficient in other
languages, so pronouncing titles, choosing the most appropriate
editions of classic works, and speaking with vendors who do not speak
English can all be difficult. Faculty who provide very clear titles,
authors, publishers as well as vendor information can help us ensure
accuracy and avoid duplication.
Keep in mind that for any library, materials published in other
languages and other countries can take much longer to receive than
domestic imprints. Ordering far ahead of the time you expect to need
any material published in other countries is crucial.
The Web has made the location of copies of
out-of-print titles more practical than it was in the past, and the
library is usually eventually successful in locating used copies of
needed works requested by faculty. The Acquisitions Department will
automatically do a preliminary search for used copies of materials
that publishers report as out-of-print.
Searching for and acquiring OP titles that are in acceptable
physical condition for a circulating collection is time consuming and
the books are often more expensive than in-print titles and may not
be in as-new condition. Please keep in mind that the turnaround time
for some OP materials will still be longer than it is for more
readily available materials. Items that are being searched for will
appear in the Voyager online catalog with the designation IN THE
PRE-ORDER PROCESS.
Faculty with requests for periodical titles that
the library should consider subscribing to should talk with Amy
Anderson, Head, Periodical Services, and with their department’s
library liaison. The periodicals budget is separate from the
budget for all other library materials.
All faculty and librarian requests are tracked
in the library’s Voyager online catalog, which can be checked
quickly from any computer with Internet access to the library’s
home page, at
http://www.southwestern.edu/library/.
Voyager gives the status of each item:
IN THE PRE-ORDER PROCESS means the item is being searched for but has
not yet been ordered
ON ORDER means the item has been ordered but not received
IN PROCESSING means the item has been received but not processed
CHECKED IN means the item is available for checkout
Requesting that the library order an item does not guarantee that
you will be the first to check it out after it is processed. If you
want to come to the library and check the item out as soon as it is
available, you can search for the on-order item in Voyager and place
a hold on it; this will generate a notice to you when the item is
ready, and the item will be held at the Circulation Desk under your
name for 7 days.
Rush requests also are held for you at the Circulation Desk after
you are notified that they are ready for checkout.
If you wish to have a list of all the items ordered at your
request during a specified period of time, contact the Acquisitions
Department staff.
As a matter of policy, the Acquisitions
Department carries out the ordering and purchasing of all materials
for the library collection. The department has negotiated discounts
up to 18-20 percent off retail prices and has free shipping with
certain vendors.
Exceptions may be made when faculty members have the opportunity
to purchase materials that would normally be extremely difficult for
the library to obtain through normal channels. Examples include
materials published in other countries, those being sold at auction
or from private collections, etc. Sale prices at conferences are
rarely worth taking advantage of, given the ease of acquiring these
books through our usual processes and the discount prices the library
already has negotiated. In addition, conference sales are often
heavily focused on paperback copies, and the library’s policy is
to prefer clothbound books for their durability.
Faculty members who are interested in directly purchasing
materials for the library and then being reimbursed are requested to
follow these procedures:
1. Always discuss your plans in advance with the Head of
Collection Development and Acquisition. All materials must conform to
the library’s collection development policy and must be titles
the library does not already own, or reimbursement will be denied. A
spending limit must be agreed in advance.
2. Ask the dealer whether the materials can instead be ordered
directly by the library. A preferable approach would be to allow the
library to order directly from the dealer. To do this, simply note
the author, title, publisher, year, price, dealer’s name,
address, phone, and fax number. Give the information to your
liaison to be placed as an order when you return to campus.
3. Additions to the library’s collection are made constantly,
so before making any non-refundable purchases you must verify that
the library does not already own the material you are purchasing.
Enter the library’s online catalog via the Internet from
www.southwestern.edu/library/ or call Acquisitions at 863-1557 for
assistance.
4. Bring all materials and receipts to the Head of Collection
Development and Acquisition. Your receipts will be forwarded to the
Business Office for reimbursement after we ascertain that we do not
already own the material and that it fits the Collection Development
Policy.
The library encourages strict adherence to these guidelines to
ensure that faculty can be reimbursed for purchases.
In addition to their responsibility for the
various library departments, all librarians
at Southwestern University serve as liaisons for one or more
subjects, and are members of one of the three university Divisions or
the School of Fine Arts. Whenever practical, liaison
assignments are coordinated with Division or School of Fine Arts
membership so that liaisons have an additional means of keeping
up with changes in curriculum, staying aware of issues of concern to
faculty, and building more meaningful partnerships with the faculty.
Librarians at Southwestern hold academic rank, are voting members
of the faculty, and serve as faculty in university governance
structures. Librarians frequently are assigned to committees that
dovetail with their liaison assignments, especially in
interdisciplinary study programs such as Environmental Studies or
Feminist Studies. Liaisons also work with the Head, Collection
Development and Acquisition in evaluating the library’s
collections as sections of the collection are analyzed and titles are
added in coordination with 10-year departmental self-studies, major
curriculum changes, or accreditation efforts.
New and established faculty are encouraged to meet with their
department’s liaison periodically to talk over library
order processes, share any changes in the department’s
curriculum, discuss perceived strengths and weaknesses in the
collection, make plans for collection development, and to share
information about their areas of study and teaching.
Liaisons also:
- Prioritize faculty requests when
requests exceed the allocated budget.
- Share responsibility for spending funds in
allocated budgets.
- Serve as liaisons between faculty
and the library.
- Communicate regularly with faculty
about remaining fund balances.
- Work to avoid oversights or imbalances
in the collection.
- Interpret the Collection Development
Policy for faculty.
- Identify needed print and electronic
information resources.
- Maintain a Subject Guide on the library’s
website for each department to direct
faculty and students to the library’s
Internet resources in specific disciplines.
- Serve as allies in developing research
assignments and help ensure that the
collection can support planned assignments.
- Provide in-class library instruction, or
direct you to another librarian who can do so.
- Represent academic department priorities
and activities to library colleagues.
- Share information about the book
and information trade, library policies
and use patterns.
The library relies on faculty requests and
communication in our efforts to ensure that the collection supports
students’ information needs. The Acquisitions Department works
hard to acquire everything requested by the faculty (and students) in
the most timely and cost-efficient way possible. All questions and
concerns about acquisitions policies should be directed to Dana
Hendrix, Head, Collection Development and Acquisition, at 863-1241 or
hendrixd@southwestern.edu. Faculty are invited to come by the
Acquisitions Department and meet our staff
and student assistants.
Dana Hendrix
Head, Collection Development and Acquisition
June 2005
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