ACQNET v1n102 (September 8, 1991) URL = http://www.infomotions.com/serials/acqnet/acq-v1n102 ISSN: 1057-5308 ACQNET, Vol. 1, No. 102, September 8, 1991 ========================================== (1) FROM: Christian SUBJECT: Who's new on ACQNET today (12 lines) (2) FROM: Ann O'Neill SUBJECT: E-mail difficulties (9 lines) (3) FROM: Vicky Reich SUBJECT: Cataloging in acquisitions (15 lines) (4) FROM: Mary Munroe SUBJECT: Book selection software (14 lines) (5) FROM: Richard Jasper SUBJECT: Datamics (33 lines) (6) FROM: Christian SUBJECT: Tenets of acquisitions (56 lines) (1) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: September 8, 1991 From: Christian Subject: Who's new on ACQNET today Deborah L. Shaw Ann Palomo Serials Librarian Applications Support Supervisor Oklahoma State University Library Cleveland Public Library E-mail: LIBRDLS@OSUCC.BITNET E-mail: ANN@LIBRARY.CPL.ORG These two people actually became members over two weeks ago. My apologies to them for not including them sooner. I still depend on paper, and I still lose it. By the way, I believe that Ann is our first public library member. (2) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 07 Sep 91 11:14 From: Ann O'Neill Subject: Email problems It has just been brought to my attention that for the last few weeks email sent to me at my usual address may not have reached me. If you have tried to contact me about my Abel project, and received no response, please try again using the following address - AONEILL@ILS.UNC.EDU This address is on a different system that is not having problems. Thanks once again. (3) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 1 Sep 91 19:28:16 PDT From: "VICKY REICH" Subject: Cataloging in acquisitions In response to Joyce's question about cataloging at point of receipt...at Stanford we call that process "push button cataloging". Staff receiving single volume monographs search an LC file for copy (CIP included). If copy is found, that record is used to record receipt. Pagination is added to CIP records. We've tried hard to keep this process as simple as possible and have about three pages of documentation for the entire procedure. At the moment we process approval materials and gifts (materials with no order records) this way; we are considering expanding this processing to materials that were ordered using LC records. We hope that eventually 40% of all incoming materi- als will be cataloged at point of receipt. Collection Development staff review approval materials before any online records are created. (4) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 03 Sep 91 14:24:40 EDT From: Mary Munroe Subject: Book selection software At GSU, we are working on a paperless method of selecting. We have discovered that the vendor we are using -- Yankee Book Peddler in this case, but I'll be willing to bet others -- can provide slips in electronic form rather than paper. If your vendor can provide the information in ASCII format, you're home free. Ours could not, but we have a student who wrote us a PASCAL program to convert the information to ASCII. We are experimenting with feeding this data into a database program, Paradox, though any such software will do. Then the selectors will select books on line. The information will be read out to a disk in ASCII again, and in our case, fed into our automated acquisitions system. For the person who asked, most of the equipment they were using would work with one of the networking versions of dBase or Paradox or FoxPro. If you were not feeding it into an automated system, it could be printed out in any format you wanted it in. Hope this helps. (5) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 30 Jul 91 11:16:11 EDT From: Richard Jasper LIBRPJ@EMUVM1.BITNET Subject: Datamics This past spring we sent an order to Datamics, Inc., for backfiles of the _Los Angeles Record_, one of many titles of interest to us in the Datamics catalog. Recently we received, in response to our order, a price quote from Datamics; the quoted price (more than $5000) was approximately 50% greater than we had encumbered AND a 50% prepayment was required. In addition, the price quote letter, which listed a suite address in New York City but no telephone number, carried the following stringent terms of sale: All sales are final. Orders not subject to cancellation. Microfilms are made on order and cannot be purchased on approval nor returned for credit or refund. No guarantee against occasional missing or damaged pages or issues is given or implied...All checks and money orders must be payable in USA currency. No claims made after 60 days following the invoice date will be considered. Terms: Normally 30 days net (60 days outside North America), however, we reserve the right to require full or partial advance payment. Alarm bells went off, resulting in my recent ACQNET query. To date, I have received responses from librarians in Maryland, Ohio, Oregon, California and Nevada, each confirming my instinctive judgment that extreme caution was in order. Datamics has been accused of refilming existing microforms and reselling the copies at inflated prices. Therefore the respondents suggested a thorough search of available microfilm masters and a price comparison prior to purchase. At this point, we have cancelled our purchase order and are searching for an alternative source--which may or may not exist. Howeverver, we think it only prudent to be a good consumer and do some shopping around. (6) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: September 8, 1991 From: Christian Boissonnas Subject: Tenets of acquisitions Let's get back to the tenets of acquisitions issue for a bit. It is too important and complex for the discussion to have run its course. It started last May when Joyce Ogburn listed "some tenets of acquisition: conditions without which we could not function." (ACQNET 1(66:4), May 2, 1991). When I asked her to expand on her notion, Joyce wrote: "I'm trying to get at the basic principles behind acquisitions, those things which make our existence possible and desirable." (ACQNET 1(70:2), May 7, 1991). Later, Barbara Winters said: "Joyce has begun to put together the theory of the discipline (in the same manner in which all sciences have defined their theory) with these tenets. She has taken the first major step in defining the role of the professional acquisitions librarian." (ACQNET 1(72:3), May 8, 1991). Joe Barker checked in with his tenets on June 19. He also said "We definitely do have tenets and they are unique." (ACQNET, 1(88-3), June 19, 1991). Finally, Tom Leonhardt, announcing the third Feather River Institute, gave it this curious title: "The Evolution of Library Materials Buying Strategies and Acquisitions Tenets: From Gathering Plans to Philosophical Models." (ACQNET 1(100:3), August 28, 1991). I have refrained from saying anything about it up to this point because I immediately got confused when the issue first came up and grew increasingly confused as time passed. Is a tenet, as Joyce said, a condition without which we could not function? How could we not function? Do they have, as Joe says, to be unique? What does it mean to say that they are basic principles? How can they appear in the same sentence with the words "Library Materials Buying Strategies?" And what, exactly is a tenet? So I went to a dictionary. A tenet is "any principle, dogma, belief or doctrine held as true, especially by an organization." "Doctrine" is a synonym. The key words here, I believe, are "held as true." How can we possibly hold them as true until we have clearly stated what they are? This we have not yet done nor, I might add, do we know what the legitimate organization is that would hold those tenets true. Is it ALA? ALCTS? A yet to be created Grand Council of World Acquisitions Librarians? We are mixing a great big stew of terms: theory, tenets, principles, profession without having a clear idea of the relationships among them. The time has come for us to clarify our thinking and to proceed with some sort of order. I am not willing to accept at face value the notion that we have tenets of acquisitions, that is, principles held as true by some organization that doesn't exist in any recognizable form, or does exist but doesn't know it. I am not even willing to accept the notion that we should have them until a lot of preliminary work has been done, work which has never been done to my satisfaction within the library profession. We need to go way back, understand how professions and their theories develop, create a model against which we can examine librarianship and, specifically, acquisitions librarianship. Only when this has been done will we be able to really understand what our tenets are if, indeed, we have any. Joyce has already done us a great service by making us see that we have a lot of work to do to clarify our own thinking before we can progress. I hope that she will lead us in this effort. ***** END OF FILE ***** END OF FILE ***** END OF FILE ***** END OF FILE *****