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:
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