Acquisitions Policy

The following procedures apply to requests for published monographs, videos, and compact discs.  Other materials (e.g. periodicals, computer software, online resources) will be handled on a case-by-case basis by the Technical Services Librarian.

Requesting Specific Titles

• Each department is responsible for forwarding its book requests to the Library.  Individual faculty members or a single liaison for a department, as decided by department members, may submit book requests to Acquisitions.
• Clearly identify the work being requested.  We need:
  • Title and Author are essential.
  • Publisher and Date are very helpful.  The latest edition of a work will be acquired unless otherwise specified.
  • The name of the requestor is also required to ensure proper accounting
• Illegible or incomplete information will slow down the purchasing process.  Using the order cards provided by the library will help ensure the appropriate information is included.

 Timeframes

• Standard book requests ordinarily take a minimum of 6 weeks to order, receive, and process.  Other material types and all overseas publications generally take much longer.
• Rush orders must be brought to Acquisitions directly, or clearly marked “RUSH”.  In urgent situations, the library staff can take steps that may result in, but cannot guarantee, faster turn-around time.
• When new books and materials arrive and have been processed, the order card submitted by faculty requestors will be returned with the book’s call number included as notification of the book’s availability.

Schedules

• The Library begins accepting book orders at the beginning of the fiscal year, July 1, and begins placing those orders in late August, dependent upon release of budget funds by the College.  Therefore, the first books of the fiscal year generally are available for use in early October.
• It is recommended that books needed at the start of any given semester be ordered during the preceding semester.
• To facilitate the integration of the Business Office’s fiscal year requirements and the Library’s careful accounting procedures, each department’s budget is broken down into two equal halves.  The first half of each department’s budget must be spent by December 7^th.  At that time, any remaining funds in that half of the budget will be spent on behalf of the department by the Library Faculty.  The second half of the departmental budgets will be released for purchases at the start of the Spring semester; any funds not spent by the fiscal year deadlines outlined below will also be spent on the department’s behalf.
• Because of fiscal year closing requirements, all Faculty video, CD, software, and overseas orders for the Spring semester are due by March 1^st.  Faculty book orders are due by April 1^st. 

Tools (provided by the library to help in making recommendations)

• Review periodicals including Choice, Library Journal, New York Times Book Review, and Publishers Weekly are all available in the Library.  If the most current issue is not available in the Current Periodicals Browsing Area, please check with the librarians, as these copies may be in use in one of the offices.
• Professional literature for academic disciplines are often excellent review sources, and many titles are carried by the Library.
• Publishers’ catalogs provide the most current information on items available, both pre- and post-publication.  The Library receives more catalogs than can be functionally useful to the Library faculty.  If a particular publisher’s catalog or catalogs on a specific subject would be useful to a department, please contact the Technical Services coordinator to set up a forwarding arrangement.
• Monthly budgetary updates are provided to the Chair of each department, or to that department’s designated selector, as are reminders of the Library’s purchasing schedule.
• Order cards, outlining the information needed by Acquisitions staff, are available in the Library.  Stop by, call, or email requests for blank cards.

Acquisitions Policy

The Howard Colman Library has established a Collection Development Policy which outlines the acquisitions process.  Highlights of that policy are as follows:

1)  The main objective of the Howard Colman Library is to build and maintain a strong, coherent, balanced, and dynamic library collection which supports the curriculum and educational mission of Rockford College.

2)  Each department on campus has a line-item fund within the Library budget; that budget is the initial responsibility of faculty, though any monies unencumbered at the end of the fiscal year deadlines will be spent by the librarians. 

3)  Final responsibility for the selection of Library materials and fulfillment of stated Collection Development objectives rests with the Library faculty.  However, the librarians rely heavily on the teaching faculty to recommend new materials for purchase to support their departments.

4)  While departments each determine how their library allocation is to be spent, Library faculty retain responsibility for selecting materials from the General fund.  Faculty requests in excess of the allocated departmental budget may be considered at fiscal year’s end for purchase from the General fund. 

5)  Student and staff requests for materials acquisitions are welcomed and encouraged, and will be reviewed according to the same selection guidelines standards as are all other requests.

6)  Faculty, student, and staff requests for non-print materials, including but not limited to videos, DVDs, sound recordings, and CD-ROMs, are evaluated on the same basis as are books, with consideration given to the ability of the Library or requesting department to provide the appropriate technological support and equipment necessary to use the material.

7)  While the Library would like to provide the same level of open-door service to serial publications as it provides to monographic materials, serials are a more difficult acquisitions issue.  Faculty wishing to add a subscription are provided with a price and usage summary of discipline-specific titles, and asked to review the subscriptions in their subject discipline to identify a title of comparable price that might be discontinued.

8)  Gifts are accepted only when they add strength to the collection and when the donor places no significant limitation on housing, handling, or disposition of duplicate, damaged or unwanted items.  Gift books and other materials are accepted without commitment as to their final disposition and with the explicit understanding that they will not necessarily be added to the collection.

The Library emphasizes the value of certain criteria when selecting materials:

1)  Emphasis should be placed on the selection of current materials, but this does not preclude purchasing materials of historic interest to a discipline, purchasing materials from a wide time-frame for new areas of collection, or filling gaps in existing collection areas caused by oversights of previous selectors or biases of previous collection policies. 

2)  The Library strives to collect as completely as is necessary to support the courses taught by the College, but does not strive for completeness for the sake of completeness. 

3)  The Library prefers to purchase well-made paperback books, when available, in order to reduce costs.  To ensure the longevity of these materials, it is the Library’s policy that all paperback books purchased through contracted vendors are strengthened with plastic covers and spine reinforcements before shipment.  The Library pays a minimal service fee for supplies and labor on the reinforcements.  The combination of paperback price and the reinforcement service fee is more economical that a policy of purchasing all hardcover books.  Newly published books only available in hardcover will be purchased in hardcover, and requests that specific items be purchased in hardcover will be honored when possible.

4)  The Library does not collect textbooks.  Individual exceptions will be considered if a textbook is the only or best authoritative source of information for a particular subject.  Textbooks donated by faculty desiring their addition to the collection will also be considered on a case-by-case basis.

5)  As a rule, the Library does not purchase duplicates of items currently available in the collection.  To purchase a duplicate copy is to forgo purchasing something not owned, therefore diminishing the resources available to users.  However, certain circumstances may warrant the purchase of a duplicate copy.  Examples include essential texts which experience heavy usage, resulting in no copies on the shelf at any time, thus hindering access, or extensive reserve assignments which would necessitate many students using the same copy of a text.  (Library funds should not, however, be spent to allow students to avoid buying required course materials.)

Out of Print Titles

If we find that a requested title is unavailable through normal channels, the order card will be returned stamped “Out of Print/Order Cancelled”.  At that time the requestor may decide not to order the book, or may request that Acquisitions staff either:

            1)  Hold the order until the item is reprinted  --or--

            2)  Attempt to purchase the item from vendors of used books.

Any attempt to purchase an out-of-print title will be done within price guidelines set by the requestor, as well as with an awareness of the requestor’s time frame of when to stop searching for the item.  Searching for out-of-print titles is a time-consuming and lengthy process; please be aware that success is never guaranteed, though Library staff will search as efficiently as they can.  Because of the nature of the work, Acquisitions staff may also be forced to set aside out-of-print searches at times of peak acquisitions activity.

Please contact the Technical Services Coordinator with any questions or concerns regarding these policies and procedures.  This office is located in the northeast corner of the first floor of the Library.

Kelly E. James, Technical Services Coordinator        

Phone:  815.394.5045    
kjames@rockford.edu

 JPR 08152001