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In 2019 a public urban academic research library decided to implement a subject- based approval plan to assess its viability to replace single-title book ordering. However, due in part to our library's unique collecting needs, the plan necessitated extensive and continuous reviews and revisions, which ultimately prompted us to discontinue the plan. Our experience was illuminating because, in the end, we felt we needed to experiment with approval plans to be sure that we were doing the right thing for our library and its users in continuing single-title purchasing of monographs.

Comic Books, Special Collections, and the Academic Library collects best practices for the acquisition, preservation, storage, and cataloging of comics, particularly single-issue (or floppy) comics, within the special collections units of academic library collections.

About 40 percent of the books academic libraries purchase in traditional ways never circulate and another 40 percent circulate fewer than three times. By contrast, patron-driven acquisition allows a library to borrow or buy books only when a patron needs them. In a typical workflow, the library imports bibliographic records into its catalogue at no cost. When a patron finds a patron-driven record in the course of research, a short-term loan can allow him to borrow the book, and the transaction charge to the library will be a small percentage of the list price. Typically, a library will automatically buy a book on a third or fourth use. The contributions in this volume, written by experts, describe the genesis and brief history of patron-driven acquisitions, its current status, and its promise.

Libraries in the USA and globally are undergoing quiet revolution. Libraries are moving away from a philosophy that is collection-centered to one focused on service. Technology is key to that change. The Patron Driven Library explores the way technology has moved the focus from library collections to services, placing the reader at the center of library activities. The book reveals the way library users are changing, and how social networking, web delivery of information, and the uncertain landscape of e-print has energized librarians to adopt technology to meet a different model of the library while preserving core values. Following an introduction, the first part begins with the historical milieu, and moves on to current challenges for financing and acquiring materials, and an exploration of why the millennial generation is transformational. The second part examines how changes in library practice can create a culture for imagining library services in an age of information overflow. The final chapter asks: Whither the library? Provides a synthesis of current research on the impact of technology on behaviour, and connecting it with library servicesOffers examples and practical advice for incorporating technology to meet user expectations and assess servicesSuggests management techniques to overcome barriers to change and technology innovation

Presenting a model that's both comprehensive and flexible, Holden demonstrates how technical competencies and ethical imperatives can inform the day-to-day workflow of acquisition librarians.

For decades the University of Illinois at Chicago Library relied on the Voyager integrated library system for acquisitions, cataloging, circulation, and other applications. By 2020, a wide range of stakeholders throughout the Library system had established their processes around its functionality. In the summer of 2020 the Library, along with ninety other members of the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois, went live in the final phase of a consortial migration to the Alma Library Services Platform. The absence of a “reporting funds” level in the ledger hierarchy in Alma threatened a fundamental premise of our long-established acquisitions processes through which Acquisitions staff translated transactions between a librarian-facing ledger and totally different University financial categories. A creative solution using Alma’s “Reporting Codes” feature was discovered after interviews with stakeholders, which prevented significant confusion throughout the Library and preserved all our processes. This case study describes the history of our acquisitions practices, the fundamental problem raised by the ledger structure in Alma as compared to Voyager, and the solution designed utilizing Alma’s “Reporting Codes” feature.

Many academic libraries collect art exhibition catalogues and juvenile books to support the curriculum, but academic library review sources and book vendors have limited coverage of these niche areas. For more than a decade, Wichita State University has used purchase plans from Worldwide Art Books and Junior Library Guild to acquire print books. This paper discusses the assessment of both plans, how experience with this assessment has influenced development of an assessment plan, and reasons other libraries may want to assess their own niche collecting plans.

This enlightening new book in the Practical Guides for Librarians series presents the practicalities of developing, implementing, and evaluating use-driven acquisition (UDA) in academic and special libraries, from the multi-dimensional perspectives of collections, acquisitions, and e-resources.

Brigham Young University, willing to experiment and pilot new e-book models, has established a comprehensive e-book strategy that includes demand-driven acquisitions, short-term loans, evidence-based acquisitions, subscription packages, purchased packages, and title-by-title purchases. This broad approach has reduced the number of titles purchased under the general domestic approval plan. At the same time, it has added value by providing access to more content, increasing usage, and lowering cost per use while maintaining the same annual expenditure.

Demand-Driven Acquisition (DDA) has been commonly adopted by academic libraries in the United States for acquiring e-books in recent years. Implementation of the e-book DDA model varies by library. This paper introduces and demonstrates a scenario analysis approach for libraries to evaluate, identify, and select a DDA plan that works best for them based on their DDA program data. This approach helps address some key questions facing libraries with a DDA e-book program: How may a DDA program be evaluated under different scenarios? Does a short-term loan (STL) option make sense? And, is the current DDA implementation a good fit for the library? The implications and related issues are discussed.