ACQNET v1n088 (June 19, 1991) URL = http://www.infomotions.com/serials/acqnet/acq-v1n088 ACQNET, Vol 1, No. 88, June 19, 1991 ==================================== (1) FROM: Christian SUBJECT: Who's new on ACQNET today (19 lines) (2) FROM: Christian SUBJECT: ACQNET in July (39 lines) (3) FROM: Joe Barker SUBJECT: Tenets of acquisitions (48 lines) (4) FROM: Peter Stevens SUBJECT: Ordering from vendor slips (17 lines) (5) FROM: Ann O'Neill SUBJECT: Ordering from vendor slips (9 lines) (6) FROM: Christian SUBJECT: Ordering from vendor slips, ethics, responsibility to one's institution (32 lines) (1) --------------------------------------------------------------- Date: June 19, 1991 From: Christian Subject: Who's new on ACQNET today Gordon Rowley Mary Buttner Assistant Dir. for Collections Head of Acquisitions Iowa State University Library Stanford U. Med. Ctr. Libr. E-mail: JL.GSR@ISUMVS.BITNET E-mail: MARY@KRYPTON. STANFORD.EDU Susan L. More Carol A. Hickey Collection Development Librarian Information System Assistant Boston Univ. Pappas Law Libr. OCLC Online Computer Libr. Ctr. E-mail: LAWML4N@BUACCA.BU.EDU E-mail: CAH@RSCH.OCLC.ORG Dina Giambi Head of Acquisitions & Serials Kent State University Library E-mail: MGIAMBI@KENTVM.BITNET (2) --------------------------------------------------------------- Date: June 19, 1991 From: Christian Subject: ACQNET in July On next Wednesday, at about 5 a.m., I will start my car and start heading toward Atlanta. I'll beat many of you there but only because some bonehead long ago decided to schedule a meeting on Friday, a meeting which I must attend. Never having been to Atlanta, I'm prepared to like it, even though I'm uncertain about hush puppies and lukewarm to fried chicken or fried catfish. After all, in earlier issues Jim Mouw and Richard Jasper have told us where to eat, and I plan to seriously test their judgments. Then, on the following Tuesday, I will leave for Chicago to pick up my wife and daughter flying in from Ithaca, and my nephew, flying in from France. That takes us to July 5th, on which date we will head west for the Big Horn mountains where I believe there are no computers. Are you jealous yet? Darn! How about if I tell you I'll be there until the 25th of July? Ah! That's better! Anyway, for one glorious month I'll be doing something different which does not involve computers. However, I am reluctant to shut ACQNET down for that long, especially during the post-ALA period when some of you suffering from post-ALA depression may need professional help only available through ACQNET. So, Richard Jasper has agreed to keep it going while I am away. He will be assisted by Scott Wicks. If you don't know who these dudes are, check your directories. That's what I sent them to all of you for. Scott, who works here, will sign on new members and forward contributions to Richard who will edit them, prepare the issues, and send the completed issues back to Scott who will mail them to all of you. This way we don't have to clutter up the Emory comput- ers with extraneous name files for only one month. Continuity, therefore, is assured, except for the ALA week. Most of us can actually talk to each other then, if we still know how. (3) --------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 13 Jun 91 16:52:47 PDT From: Joe Barker Subject: Tenets of acquisitions I have been pondering for some weeks the questions and comments raised by Joyce Ogburn and Barbara Winters et al. on the tenets or principles of acquisitions. We definitely do have tenets, and they are unique. Last week at the Feather River Conference (such a wonderful confer- ence for stimulating discussion and fresh ways of looking at things -- so intimate and open!!), several papers skirted the topic of who, why, and what acquisitions librarians are. The topic sparked so much discussion that, in fact, Tom Leonhardt is planning to make tenets one of the themes of next year's conference. These are some of my thoughts on acquisition tenets, generated at Feather River: It seems to me that we are positioned in libraries as the link between the outside world and our institutions, between our compli- cated and introverted catalogs and the goal of acquiring materials from outside, between our staffs and our in-house jargon and other units and vendors and publishers, between our campus accounting offices and auditors and acquisitions process, between our systems offices and the needs of acquisitions work, between our AUL's and their drive for productivity and the needs of acquisitions and our staffs, between selectors and funds and acquisitions, and between the ethics of acquisitions librarians and the vendors and sources from whom we buy. (I think Joe Hewitt said most of this already.) My point is that we do a lot of interpolating. In doing this, I believe we alternate among the roles of purchasing agent, accoun- tant, financial planner and advisor, personnel manager, systems analyst, and industrial relations/operations research engineer. We are specialists for our libraries in each of these distinct (and better paid) professions. Now, what has this to do with tenets? Each of these professions has a code of ethics, a set of standard practices, and/or professional schools and organizations that, through competition in the marketplace, keep performance standards high. Each has tenets embedded in these codes or standards. Our role is to be the unspoken and unofficial representative within our institutions for ALL of these codes and standards as they pertain to acquisitions. We are unsung, masters of most of the tenets of all of the professions named above. (4) --------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 17 Jun 91 13:11:14 PDT From: Peter Stevens Subject: Vendors vs ordering direct Like the others who have commented on this issue, I try to direct as much ordering as possible to vendors. We send out about 20,000 purchase orders annually, with about 80% US and 20% foreign. About 66% of our US ordering goes to seven major vendors, with the rest going to publishers and small vendors. Much as we try to concen- trate ordering with vendors, we find we often have to go direct. A quick check of our online vendor database of 6,675 ven- dors/publishers shows that only 4% or about 270 vendors account for more than 50 orders in the three years we have used this database; another 13% of our vendors account for 5-50 orders. About 83% of our vendors/publishers account for only 1-4 orders over the last three years. We are making a renewed effort as a result to push more ordering towards vendors and away from publishers. (5) --------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 15 Jun 91 10:05 From: Ann O'Neill Subject: Ordering from vendor slips I must say I agree with Jim Mumm's assessement of ordering from vendor slips. Vendors are supplying these slips as a service and they have no guarantee that we would by the book, even if they were the only source of slips for the library. The concern about ethics is important, but should be centered on larger issues in the relationship between librarians and vendor. (6) -------------------------------------------------------------- Date: June 19, 1991 From: Christian Subject: Ordering from vendor slips, ethics, responsibility to one's institution Two main points seem to have emerged from this discussion. Let me see if I can summarize them. 1. It's OK to order items selected from one vendor's slip from another vendor. There is no ethical issue there. Vendors, who invest in those slips, do so with no guarantees whatsoever that the slips will result in orders. 2. We owe it to our institutions, to whom we first owe allegiance to buy books as cheaply as possibly. Indeed, it would be unethical for us not to do so. We would be derelict in the performance of our duty. So, if we can get a citation from a vendor who offers a book at 10% and order it from another who offers it at 12%, we have done our duty and have been ethical. Well, since I brought the issue up in the first place I owe you to tell you that your arguments have convinced me. I agree with both statements, unreservedly. While I always agreed with the second, my initial thinking with respect to the first was that I was morally obliged to order from the vendor who took the trouble, and incurred the expense, of sending me slips. The clinching argument was Marylou Hale's. She compared buying from slips to shopping from catalogs. Mail order firms know that they are competing with other mail order firms on the same products. So do booksellers. So, thank you Marylou, and thank you to all who thought about this and wrote. *** END OF FILE *** END OF FILE *** END OF FILE *** END OF FILE ***