ACQNET v5n004 (February 1, 1995) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/serials/stacks/acqnet/acqnet-v5n004 ISSN: 1057-5308 *************** ACQNET, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1, 1995 ======================================== (1) FROM: Howard Bybee SUBJECT: RE: Gifts & Exchange Summary (81 lines) (2) FROM: R. Russell Neuswanger SUBJECT: Acquisitions & Unfinished LC records (65 lines) (1)--------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 23 Jan 1995 10:57:54 -0500 From: Howard Bybee (Brigham Young U.) Subject: Re: Gifts & Exchange summary The Gifts and Exchange summary interested me. I had not seen the original query on Serialist. Our Gift and Exchange operation operates in two different departments. Gifts, both monographs and serials, are received by the Gifts unit which is part of Acquisitions. The Gifts unit also receives and processes retrospective collections acquired by purchase, purchase/gift or as straight gifts. Once received gifts/collections are counted, inventoried if required for tax purposes, sorted into monographs and serials and reviewed. Serials go to an exchange clerk in the Serials Department, searched, compared to stacks for replacement or new title addition to the collection and the remainder discarded or placed on an exchange list. The final residue goes to recycling. Monographs receive a preliminary review based upon a broad profile by the gifts librarian or by a subject specialist if the donation fits a subject category as a whole. They are searched, compared to stacks. The duplicates are used to upgrade the collection or for additional copies. The non-duplicates are added if they fit our profiles. Because we generate many surplus books I manage the book sales. We have an unsupervised, standing book sale near our copy center cashier. We hold about 6 "Special Book Sales" a year that generate about $12,000.00 a year. They are held for 4 hours only about every two months. We also sell actively to a small group of mostly local dealers, though I also ship to dealers in and out of the country. We operate with one faculty supervisor and from 10-14 part time student employees. Because our unit generates a cataloging backlog and because we operate vehicles for gift pick up we also page titles held in our remote storage facility and manage part of that facility which holds overflow and cataloging queues. Though active solicitation is minimal, some large collections are acquired by subject specialists and other collection development personnel each year. Unexpected bequests bring many more books to the library and retiring faculty add to the flow. Recently we have conducted a study to determine future gifts policy. That committee has not finished it report yet. The preliminary findings recommend a campus wide education program to reduce unwanted gifts and educate library liaison personnel in evaluating gifts with the intent of limiting the quantity of unused material received by the Gifts section. Eliminating gifts seems unwise for many reasons. A cost analysis (very difficult to perform completely) seems to indicate that average acquisitions costs are about $18.00 per title added. Average purchase price for new books is around $50.00. Beyond that the titles added to the collection are mostly out of print, serve to upgrade the heavily used titles already in our stacks and provides a source of revenue for acquiring other titles from the O-P market. Of course positive public relations results from a good gifts program. Along with our efforts to better control the quality of our gifts receipts I am considering an active solicitation program in order to acquire titles that the library needs to enhance special collections and stacks collections. Titles appear on the OPAC and acquisitions system only when they are added to collection. Inventories are compiled for donors upon request on Procite. This service which started sometime in the long distant past is currently under review. The committee recommends that inventories be the responsibility of the donor. Anyone who works with gifts and book sales knows that there are many different variations in the donor/library relationship. I find it a very interesting and rewarding occupation resulting in very positive contributions to the library. ========================================================= Howard C. Bybee Acquisitions Department 6386 Harold B. Lee Library Brigham Young University Provo, UT 84602 ========================================================= (2)---------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 30 Jan 1995 17:18:30 -0500 From: R. Russell Neuswanger (Library of Congress) Subject: Acquisitions & Unfinished LC records This is a new version of an appeal I tried to put out five or six weeks ago, and couldn't seem to get into plain English; I hope Eleanor and Jim will both bounce it if I still haven't. And my apologies to those of you who follow both Acqnet and German-E! The Acquisitions Directorate here is reorganizing; I am and have been representing my colleagues on various committees (especially one for workflow and costing) which have majorities with little or no cataloging background. (One got into a genial round of good mellow (purely oral) catalog- & cataloger-bashing when it finished up, forgetting I was there; it sounded like a familiar sport ....) It didn't and doesn't seem to me that these nice people (and they are nice people) generally know the *uses* of our records outside LC, let alone the needs of those who use them. Cataloging people, including preliminary catalogers (peons) like me, necessarily get some intimation of others' uses and needs over the years, since our rules are written and rewritten to accommodate them, and we have to try to keep up with the changes, too. I sense a lack of such intimations in many people I talk with now. It would help to get some sense of whether it makes a difference, and how much, to have the present so-called "in-process record" conform to normal (especially descriptive) LC cataloging requirements sooner rather than later, and how soon -- especially if there is any measure of consensus. Do many libraries use LC records in an unfinished state at all? Once the item is here, is it more important that LC do whatever can be done to the record (*without* the use of CatRef, without authority work, using only the item and the computer) soonest period, or soonest subject to getting it right the first time, or what? In particular, what about uses of LC records (particularly, still, ones in the early stages of creation) for purposes *other* than cataloging, especially for acquisition purposes? If I can specialize still more, how about records for items not in English? Remember this is me asking, not LC, which may or may not put any weight at all on anything I say. AND THEN, A SECOND POSTING: Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 09:01:29 -0500 (EST) There is a misunderstanding which is my fault: I forgot to remind people that some libraries (maybe all, via Net) have access to our records as soon as they go into Locis, *while we are still working on them*. Those are the ones I'm concerned with for the present purpose: I may be able to argue for more accuracy earlier on, if I can get the ammo. The debate over *eventual* quality (and a record can take, literally, years, plural, to get from me to completion) is not one I have any particular voice in. (I do, of course, have an opinion -- and am glad of corroboration: thanks again!) The real question, from my perspective, is whether Acquisitions reorganizes in such a way that records reach maximum accuracy at each stage, or only by the end. R. R. Neuswanger, Ph.D., NRA life Balto-Fennic, Germanic, Romance AcqBibSuppProj (ABSP), LC Washington, DC 20540-4120 202.707.8747 (shared line) ****** END OF FILE ****** ACQNET, Vol. 5, No. 4 ****** END OF FILE ******