Acquisitions of Library Materials

• Collection management


  The responsibility of analyzing the user community, developing the collection policy and identifying materials for selection in alignment with both user needs and the policy in place
• Acquisitions


  The work carried on through acquiring identified resources
• Broad categories of acquisition work

  • Making decisions regarding how to acquire an item
  • Working with vendors/suppliers to secure the desired materials
  • Maintaining the appropriate financial and other records relate to each acquisition transaction
• Acquisitions staff


  • Must have skills including rapid decision making, fiscal management, good communication, technological savvy, ability to deal with licensing/leasing agreements, and diplomacy when dealing with colleagues and consortia members
• Core competencies for electronic resources librarians

  • Fiscal management
  • licensing knowledge
  • understanding of metadata
  • standards
  • emerging practices
• Core competencies for print resources management

  • Ability to troubleshoot problems
  • evaluate workflow
• Those involved in acquisitions work must have an increasingly broad set of skills, including flexibility, open-mindedness and the ability to function in a dynamic, rapidly changing environment
• Coordination between collection management and acquisitions personnel

  Requires that all parties understand the work processes, problems, and the value of one another's work
• Acquisitions departments' broad goals

  • To acquire materials in as timely and cost effective a manner as possible
  • To maintain a high level of accuracy in all work procedures
  • To keep workflows simple in order to achieve the lowest possible unit cost
  • To provide data on items acquired to collection management and administration
  • To develop close friendly working relationships with other library units and with vendors
• Speed is a significant factor in meeting user demands and improving user satisfaction
• Studies have shown that, in many medium-sized and large libraries, the costs of acquiring and processing an item are equal to or greater than the price of the item
• Online ordering, electronic invoicing, and credit card payments greatly enhance the speed with which the department can handle much of the traditional paperwork
• Acquisitions is often turned to by collection management and library administration to provide the data required for a number of reporting requirements, usually in a short timeframe
• Flexibility on behalf of acquisitions staff


  Comes into play when responding to data requests in a timely manner
• Developing and maintaining good relationships

  The underlying key to successful acquisitions programs
• Areas where relationships are of special importance


  • With public services staff
  • With the cataloging/metadata services department
  • With library and organizational budget and administrative offices
• Relationship with public services staff

  They are the most important group for the acquisitions department to establish positive relationships with, as it is their input that generates primary work activities for acquisitions units
• Tensions can develop if the percentage of accurate information provided by public services staff drops and the acquisitions department has to spend more time tracking down and verifying required information
• Keeping the flow of material into and out of the acquisitions department constant is often a challenge, especially near the end of the fiscal year
• Steps in the overall acquisitions process


  • Request processing
  • Verification
  • Ordering
  • Reporting (fiscal management)
  • Receiving orders
• Request processing


  Incoming requests must be reviewed to establish both the need for the item and that all of the required ordering information is there
• Verification


  The attempt to establish an item's existence when there is very little information, similar to detective work
• When the request is from users, the acquisitions department must check if the item is in the queue to be ordered, on order, or received and being processed, and also if it is already in the collection in another format
• Tracking order requests


  Developing a web form that will ask the requester all the information required by the system's recordkeeping and vendors can increase efficiency and ease
• Creating records of ordered materials


  Information should include the bibliographic record, when it was ordered, vendor, estimated cost, funds used, location, and relevant notes
• Searching and verifying orders

  Basic cataloging training, knowledge of the WorldCat database, and using vendor and bookseller databases can help acquisitions personnel locate and complete information about items
• When to order materials


  The timing of the acquisitions cycle is determined by the fiscal year calendar and the financial policies of the institution
• Variations in titles


  Publishers often issue the same items in the United States and the United Kingdom but change the title slightly
• New editions of an item may have a title that is slightly different from the previous versions
• You need to verify which edition or publication date is needed
• Fiscal year calendar


  Determines the timing of the acquisitions cycle
• If the fiscal year runs from July through June, most ordering will be done between August and April to allow plenty of time to receive materials and check out orders before the new fiscal year
• Carrying over funds


  Libraries may be able to carry over funds that have not been spent by the end of one fiscal year, keeping the funds in the library's accounts for use in the next fiscal cycle, giving more flexibility
• Understanding the fiscal cycles of your parent institution will help you make the most of your financial resources and plan for an orderly fiscal closing process
• Some books go out of print rapidly, sometimes becoming unavailable in the print format within a few months of publication
• You should order most print books at the time of publication
• You may decide to order materials before they are officially published in order to increase your chances of getting copies of items with small print runs
• Acquisition methods


  • Firm order
  • Standing order
  • Approval plans
  • Blanket order
  • Subscriptions (for serials departments)
  • Leases
  • Gifts
  • Exchange
• An order is a legal contract between the library and the vendor
• A vendor could force payment even if the library experiences a financial setback