ACQNET: RE - Procedure for book requests

Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 12:05:17 -0600
From: John Hempstead (Viterbo Univ.) <johempstead_at_viterbo.edu>
Subject: RE - Procedure for book requests

Until this year, Viterbo used the clunky method that several
people described of sending in a catalog with a circled
item. Recently, however, we hired a new Acquisitions
librarian. She set up a program for requesting materials via
an Excel template.  She created the template with columns
for:
Title, Author, Publisher/Vendor, Pub Date, ISBN, bk/vid/cd,
Price, Notes (Requestor, other order information.)

The template automatically totals up the order and a master
template totals the expected price (or actual price of books
received) for all orders placed during the fiscal year. With
this information the liaison knows whether a budget is still
remaining for that department.  The library has a liaison
for each academic department. Most librarians coordinate
purchases and buget information for two or more departments.

The Acquisitions librarian sent the template to each
liaison.  The liaison checks titles as they are requested,
adds them to the template, and forwards the order as an
email attachment to the Acquisitions Librarian. She enters
the information into the Innovative Millennium acquisitions
module. The item immediately appears in our catalog as on
order. When the order is received, the Acquisitions
librarian processes the book and returns to the liaison the
order template with the actual price of the item.

This order procedure takes longer for the liaison, but it
provides everyone with much better budget information. It is
much more efficient for the Acquisitions librarian. Since
this is our first year, we cannot speak from experience, but
we expect that we will not have the budget overruns that we
have had in some departments during previous years when
record keeping was more haphazard. So far all liaisons have
had good comments about having an organized way of keeping
purchase order records.