This volume will help you acquire and manage a strong collection for your library, even when budgets are being cut. Topics covered include purchasing materials, formulating selection criteria, sharing materials with other institutions, and evaluating and preserving materials. This edition by the late Elizabeth Futas begins with the results of the author's survey of academic and public libraries. The author then explains how a sharply focused and clearly articulated collections development policy can assist libraries in providing the best possible service in the most cost-effective manner. These and other ideas, practices, and policies in this new edition will allow libraries to continue meeting the needs of their particular constituents, even in uncertain economic times.
For over a decade, some academic libraries have been purchasing, rather than borrowing, recently published books requested by their patrons through interlibrary loan. These books had one circulation guaranteed and so appealed to librarians who were concerned about the large percentage of books selected and purchased by librarians but never checked out by their patrons. Early assessments of the projects indicated that patrons selected quality books that in many cases were cross disciplinary and covered emerging areas of scholarly interest. However, now we have a significant database of the ILL purchase records to compare these titles with books selected through normal methods. The projects described in this book present a powerful argument for involving patrons in the book selection process. This book looks at patron-driven acquisitions for printed books at Purdue University, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Illinois, as well as exploring new programs that allow patrons to select e-books or participate in other innovative ways in building the library collections. This book was published as a special issue of Collection Management.
Reading and the Reader defends the value of reading serious literature, investigating the role of the reader in the human search for meaning outside as well as inside of books.
Updated and enhanced, the second edition of this text provides both library students and practitioners with a thorough understanding of procedural and philosophical approaches in acquisitions management. Since the last edition of this text was published over a decade ago, library acquisitions practices have changed dramatically in response to economic and industry changes and the introduction and maturation of new technologies. An essential tool kit, this updated edition covers every aspect of current acquisitions management from organization of acquisitions departments to professional ethics. The step-by-step guide takes you through acquisitions department activities from the beginning of the ordering process through making materials available to the public. You'll learn about the latest acquisitions systems, negotiating bids and RFPs, gifts and exchange, and decisions of permanence. In addition, the book provides expert guidance on relationships with vendors as well as on the publishing industry in general. Key among the updates to this second edition is information about major changes that have occurred recently, including what's new in integrated library systems, electronic resource management, and patron- and demand-driven acquisitions. An appendix offers a wealth of resources on topics related to acquisitions and includes a comprehensive glossary.
Acquisitions and Collection Development in the Humanities is a one-of-a-kind guide on the procedures, approaches, and principles needed to make sound decisions in acquiring materials in various areas of the humanities. It gives you an inside look at managerial concerns in documentary delivery, changing budgetary needs, and fluctuations in journal prices and helps you address many of the important questions in acquisitions and collection development within both traditional and technological environments.As contributing author Dennis Dillon puts it, the ultimate goal of humanities librarians “is not to acquire information bytes and bits, but to promote integrity: integrity of texts, integrity of selection, the integrity of the collection, and the integrity of the library and its ultimate purpose.” This objective underlies this multifaceted and comprehensive collection of articles, as the authors address many interesting issues, developments, and challenges in the field, including: selecting candidates for digitization and producing e-texts collecting in areas that don’t have immediate utility or that may be unpopular what librarians need to know about the humanities as a discipline in order to effectively meet the informational and technological needs of their constituencies online discussion groups as useful sources of webliographic information cooperative collection building the importance of maintaining a high degree of local ownership for materials the principles, criteria, and tools needed to develop a Native American studies collection document-driven and use-driven approaches to collecting acquiring and preserving records that chronicle the role played by African Americans in the United States’developmentAcquisitions and Collection Development in the Humanities can help professional librarians, graduate school faculty, and students in information and library science acquire the knowledge and skills necessary for building a broadly based and academically responsive collection. It will certainly help you keep up with changes in the information environment and show you how the tools you’ve developed for selecting traditional library materials will be useful as you grapple with electronic texts, “spider” search mechanisms on the Web, becoming a webliographer, and budget shortfalls.
