Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 15:39:27 -0600 (CST)
From: Kim Hale (Columbia College) <kah000_at_mail.lib.colum.edu>
Subject: Summary of responses - Approval plan return policies
Here are the responses I received so far:
"...Our policy is not to return approval books except for duplication.
Our return rate is now around less than 1%. Our philosophical thinking on
this issue was summarized on a dialog type article published 'Approval
Plans and Approval Vendor selection in an Outsourcing Environment',
Library Acquisitions: Practice and Theory, v.22:4, 1998, pp. 423-429."
"We switched to this approach a number of years ago. It was felt
that the cost of cataloging and processing the few marginal titles was
less than the cost of time to review and shipping of the few we would
return. Titles would be made available to the public much earlier. As for
negative feedback from the bibliographers, I was not aware of any."
"We do this. No real problems so far. We'd gotten down to a 2% return
rate, which is why we instigated this. We get everything shelf-ready, so
we have a real time-savings too. I'd say maybe once every quarter (or
even 6 months) there's something iffy that gets added to the collection
(usually an all-picture art or design book) and we're happy to live with
that give the time we save in reviewing and in processing."
I excluded the respondents name and institution as I don't have their
permission to include (although I doubt they would mind). Two of the
responses were in the 3/11/01 ACQNET issue, so only the first was sent
directly to me.
If there are any additional, I will pass them on as well.
Kim
Kimberly Hale, Acquisitions Librarian/Coordinator of Collection Development
Library, Columbia College Chicago
624 South Michigan Avenue Chicago, IL 60605
(312)344-7355(voice) / (312)344-8062(fax)
Received on Sat Apr 28 2001 - 12:06:45 EDT