ACQNET v1n010 (January 7, 1991) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/serials/stacks/acqnet/acq-v1n010 ACQNET, Vol 1, No. 10, January 7, 1991 ====================================== (1) FROM: Editor SUBJECT: Thanks (6 lines) (2) FROM: Joe Barker SUBJECT: BookQuest (9 lines) (3) FROM: Christian Boissonnas SUBJECT: BookQuest (12 lines) (4) FROM: Joe Barker SUBJECT: American Belles Lettres approval plan (14 lines) (5) FROM: Joe Barker SUBJECT: Acquisitions journals, ACQNET (38 lines) (1) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DATE: January 7, 1991 FROM: Editor SUBJECT: Thanks To the four of you who responded today to my request for Carol's e-mail address, thank you. I made contact with her and she is now on the network. I could, of course, have called her but this is a whole lot more fun. (2) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DATE: January 7, 1991 FROM: Joe Barker SUBJECT: BookQuest Would you ask K. Granskog to supply the percentage that 20 successful op searches with BookQuest is of the total tried. Also, at the risk of contra- dicting my own ethical stand, could she tell whom else she has been using for o.p. searches, and, at least, whether she uses any other online search service. (What she has given is tantalizing only.) (3) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DATE: January 7, 1991 FROM: Christian Boissonnas SUBJECT: BookQuest At the ALCTS Regional Acquisitions Institute to be held next Spring in Boston I will be making a presentation on out-of-print procurement and BookQuest. This is simply to tell you all who are interested in it that I am in the middle of a research project testing the use of BookQuest and evaluating its performance compared to those of my more traditional sources. I will put something together after ALA to give you a flavor of what I'm finding, but a complete report will have to wait until after the Institute. (4) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DATE: January 7, 1991 FROM: Joe Barker SUBJECT: American Belles Lettres approval plan Berkeley has had an approval plan including American Belles Lettres with Coutts ever since the collapse of Abel & Co. We find that David Bissell at Coutts is very good at identifying this material, and deciding what's "right for Berkeley." Recently we've been too impoverished to collect at the level we should, and David has been quite successful at cutting back with reasonable prioritization. The selectors have some concern about the speed of delivery of the materials (and, with recent cutbacks, about discount), but these have not been a strong enough worries to warrant sacrificing the quality of Coutts' selections. Berkeley is always looking for better, however, and so keep us informed of your discoveries and decisions. (5) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 7 Jan 91 12:23:21 PST From: Joe Barker Subject: Acquisitions journals I think it would be dreadful if we had to "behave as the scholarly community behaves," quoting Kay Granskog. Most of us do not live on publish or perish jobs, and, if we did, we should not succumb to publishing anything that can get accepted with the hope that our promotion and tenure review boards will not have the guts or time to read and evaluate it. And we should not proliferate journals in order to make it easier to publish or to gratify the ambitions of publishers who would exploit us in order have something to sell and thereby try to create a market where there is no genuine need. We are, for the most part, responsible for making a complex operation run according to traditions, production standards, policies, and library procedures which are unique to each of our institutions, but which also share something in common. This something is the theory of our work. Ours is a young profession within another fairly young profession. Its theory is not well defined, and both professions are still evolving--still finding their place in society. I welcome ACQNET because it might enable us to communicate about a lot of trifles and short inquiries that are not theory, and spare the journals the load of this important level of chatter that is, for the most part, not worth using a lot of trees and shelfspace on. (I am, by the way, collecting every issue of ACQNET on acid-free bond and donating it to our Library School Libary.) I agree with Karen Muller that we can recognize quality when it appears. And Karen certainly figures among those of us who, while doing research for publication, have found a lot of quality in our literature. As with purely academic publishing, it can save the thinker later on a lot of time. It can also help us know who we are, what we have in common, and what we like, find useful, and abhor. Here's another good topic for at least part of an Acq Admin discussion group.