Patron-Driven Acquisition and Circulation at an Academic Library: Interaction Effects and Circulation Performance of Print Books Acquired via Librarians’ Orders,Approval Plans,and Patrons’ Interlibrary Loan Requests

Numerous publications on patron-driven acquisition (PDA) for print books and similar materials have reported that patron-requested materials circulate more. Tying circulation to selector may be failing to address the complex of factors that contributes to items' circulation. In the present study, the authors revisit a PDA program's data and to determine whether PDA print books' circulation advantage persists when the potential interactions of several additional variables are taken into account. As with prior studies, library patrons were significantly better predictors of circulation than were librarians or approval plans. However, librarians proved to be significantly better predictors than were approval plans.     

Approval plans for religious and theological libraries

The task of acquiring materials in the area of religion on a level to support research and teaching for graduate or professional programs is a challenging one. Even within the relatively narrow scope of religious or theological studies, the quantity of published material makes it a substantial task to review all newly published titles. The concept of an approval plan, whereby books published within a defined subject area (or areas) are automatically shipped to the library, at first seems a logical and elegant method of reducing the burden on typically overworked bibliographers. Unfortunately, experiences from a variety of seminary and theological libraries corroborate our essentially negative experiences with approval plans. It appears that for specialized collections such as theological libraries, approval plans may be a good idea whose time has not (or perhaps never will) come. Some of the problems with approval plans are discussed, and the alternatives used by the Divinity Library at Vanderbilt are presented.     

Slavic Approval Plans: What Works and What Doesn't

ABSTRACT

The paper looks at library approval plans for material published in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian countries from the selector's point of view. Reasons why a selector would or would not want one are examined. Success with approval plans requires monitoring receipts, as well as good and ongoing communication among the selector, the acquistions department, and the vendor. A preliminary list of vendors offering approval plans for the countries of the region appears in the appendix.     

Information systems and collection development in public libraries

Collection development in public libraries is performed by one or more librarians who make use of a variety of selection tools. Computers and information systems are becoming increasingly important tools for selectors because they offer alternatives for assessing user needs, for gathering information about published materials, and for obtaining materials quickly. This paper describes a case study of twelve public library systems, the tasks they perform, and the sources they use in collection development. The selectors reported satisfaction with their jobs, increasing reliance upon information systems and electronic resources, and the need for system improvements to support selection for local collections in a publishing climate responsive to popular taste.     

The pregnant pause: The time between profiling an approval plan and receiving books

In the selection of a new approval plan vendor, most of the library's attention is on pricing, selection procedures, publisher coverage, and profiling. In most cases, less thought is given to what events will actually take place between the time profiles are completed and books are shipped to the library. Decisions surrounding this time period can make the difference between a successful and problematic approval plan implementation. This article, developed by a bookseller, explores these issues and the options libraries have in the implementation phase of approval plans.     

The approval plan profiling session

The approval plan profiling session, when vendor and library meet to establish specifications for a new approval plan, has received little attention in the literature. Preparation for the session requires decisions on a range of issues bearing upon the ultimate success of an approval plan such as publisher scope, subject specifications, duplication control, and budget. Organization of the session itself is also important. In addition to creation of a new profile, the profiling session is an excellent opportunity for library staff and the vendor, working together closely for a day or more, to lay the foundation for a strong and lasting relationship. This article is primarily intended for librarians new to the administration of approval plans. It outlines the steps necessary to organize a successful profiling session, whether for an entirely new approval plan, or for a new plan replacing a plan with another vendor.     

Vendor evaluation: A selected annotated bibliography, 1955–1987

This annotated bibliography, aimed at acquisitions and collection development librarians, gathers and organizes the scattered materials on performance evaluation of library material vendors (i.e., jobbers, wholesalers, serial agents, and publishers). The authors, the Vendor Study Group of the Association for Higher Education of North Texas, cite the most significant items found on vendor performance written between 1955 and the first half of 1987. Excluded are citations concerned with approval plans and those with marginal relevancy to the subject. The bibliography is organized into two categories: (1) Methodologies and Studies and (2) Supporting Materials.     

Planning for the Budget-ocalypse: The Evolution of a Serials/ER Cancellation Methodology

The University of North Texas (UNT) Libraries are funded almost entirely by undergraduate student use fees. As the undergraduate enrollment has plateaued in recent years, the libraries have not been able to keep up with rising costs, resulting in a series of cuts to the materials budget totaling around $3.25 million. While some of these cuts took the form of reductions in firm orders and dissolution of approval plans, for the past three years the bulk has come from cancellations of serials and electronic resources. With each year’s cuts, the UNT Collection Development department has been forced to modify and refine their deselection process. This article will show the development of UNT’s strategy for determining cancellations using a variety of methods (overlap analysis, usage statistics, faculty input) and tools (EBSCO Usage Consolidation, Serials Solutions 360).     

Using expert evaluations to complete centralized library systems

An interactive system of expert evaluations of offers made by the Russian and foreign information market of scientific literature issued in both printed and electronic form is described. The system supports the database of experts and the periodically updated database of offers of the information market. An expert evaluation is carried out over the internet from a special division of the LNS RAS site, access to which is available only to authorized users, i.e., experts. Expert selectors make decisions about ordering various editions for funding from the centralized library system by analyzing tables formed based on processed results from expert evaluations with the help of specially created software tools.     

Electronic order request submission at UF libraries: Three pilot programs

This paper deals with three online selection/order pilot programs conducted in the Acquisitions Department at the University of Florida Libraries between 1989 and 1991. The first two projects explore the possible real-time generation of order requests and the desirability of updating the status of the order requests in the preorder stage. The methodology used in these two projects was (1) transmission of order requests from selectors to the Searching Unit of the Acquisitions Department via the NOTIS online library system and (2) online communication between selectors and the Searching Unit staff regarding the searching status prior to order creation. The third pilot investigates the feasibility of nonlinear file manipulation and report generation in the preorder stage. Double Helix, a Macintosh-based relational database program was used to test its ability to create reports needed by collection management and acquisitions staff. The benefits and limitations of the three pilot programs and future plans are also reported.     

Improving Collection Browsing: Small World Networking and Gray Code Ordering

Documents in digital and paper libraries may be arranged, based on their topics, in order to facilitate browsing. It may seem intuitively obvious that ordering documents by their subject should improve browsing performance; the results presented in this article suggest that ordering library materials by their Gray code values and through using links consistent with the small world model of document relationships is consistent with improving browsing performance. Below, library circulation data, including ordering with Library of Congress Classification numbers and Library of Congress Subject Headings, are used to provide information useful in generating user-centered document arrangements, as well as user-independent arrangements. Documents may be linearly arranged so they can be placed in a line by topic, such as on a library shelf, or in a list on a computer display. Crossover links, jumps between a document and another document to which it is not adjacent, can be used in library databases to allow additional paths that one might take when browsing. The improvement that is obtained with different combinations of document orderings and different crossovers is examined and applications suggested.     

The Art of Crafting Music Score Approval Plans: An Ongoing Process

Although approval plans have long been an accepted tool for monographic collection development, they have seen comparatively slow adoption for music scores. This slow adoption is mirrored by a relative dearth of literature about music score approval plans. At a time when changes in the financial and publishing landscape are having a profound impact on collection development practices and current trends in organizational restructuring are placing greater demands on librarians' time, the need for contemporary discussion of approval plans is that much greater. This article discusses the ups and downs of one library's foray into music score approval plans.     

Does Title-By-Title Selection Make a Difference? A Usage Analysis on Print Monograph Purchasing

This article compares the usage of print monographs acquired through firm orders and approval plans to determine whether title-by-title book selection makes a difference. The circulation data of print monographs acquired in a four-year period were extracted and separated according to their acquisition methods. Usage data were analyzed according to the Library of Congress Classification system and library's three subject area groups (Humanities, Social Sciences, and Sciences). The results indicate that books acquired via firm orders had a higher circulation rate in almost all subject areas. The authors discuss how the findings can be used to inform future collection practices.     

Activities for a Regional Medical Library: a view of priorities by users and librarians.

Priorities are given for five major categories of regional medical library activities, with further ordering of some fifty specific activities, as determined through discussion with, and a questionnaire survey of, the advisory committee of the Midcontinental Regional Medical Library. These activity priorities are considered a working tool for formulation of objectives and development of plans, and do not include a consideration of methodologies for implementation. User and librarian responses are noted and some interpretive comments are made.     

Flipped Interlibrary Loan (F.I.L.L.): Putting Interlibrary Loan in the Driver's Seat of Acquisitions

Interlibrary loan (ILL) is an important service point in the academic library, a channel through which patrons can ask for specific books and expect that those books will be made available to them. Examining the methods in which libraries handle those requests may reveal new workflows wherein ILL can influence the direction of the library's permanent acquisitions. ILL data is able to drive immediate purchases of user-requested titles but also more complex models of acquisition. By comparing circulation rates and expenditures against traditional book-approval plans, acquisitions departments may also measure the financial effectiveness of purchase-on-demand programs and use them to both supplement and supplant those approval plans. At the core of Lehigh University's efforts is an internal library philosophy called “Flipped Interlibrary Loan” (F.I.L.L.), by which ILL can and should inform permanent acquisitions for the library collection.     

教育资源数字图书馆——21世纪技能学习的门户

教育资源数字图书馆项目（TheGatewayto21stCenturySkills）是由美国雪城大学信息学院于1996年发起并得到美国教育部资助的重要数字图书馆项目,该项目力图将分散在互联网中的免费教学资源收集起来,建立一个便捷的导航平台供用户免费查询使用。文章对该数字图书馆的发展历程、意义及现状进行了综合性的述评,包括项目概述、资源组织、技术特征、服务特点以及作者的评价与建议。     

Methods of Selection and Acquisition of European French Monographs in an Academic Law Library

This article examines methods of selection and acquisition for European (as opposed to Canadian) French-language print monographs for a research-level law library collection in North America based on the study of the practices and techniques locally developed in the Nahum Gelber Law Library, McGill University. These techniques represent a combination of non–approval plan–based methods: blanket order, standing orders, online slip service in WorldCat, use of other libraries’ acquisition lists, and firm orders. The methods described in this article are not exclusive to the selection in the subject area of law and could be applied in other academic disciplines.