Phone: (724) 738-2058 • Fax: (724) 738-2661 • Email: askalibrarian@sru.edu • AIM: SRUBaileyLibrary

SRU > Library > Departments > Collection Management and Acquisitions

Collection Management and Acquisitions

Contact        Links        Phone: 724-738-2339

The Collection Management and Acquisitions Department is responsible for monitoring, allocating, and expending the library materials budget in coordination with the Serials Librarian, Catherine Rudowsky, and the Electronic Resources Librarian, Lynn Hoffmann.  more...

Jessica Marshall, the Collections Management Librarian, requests each year that the Department Chairs select a liaison to the library.  After the Director of Library Services allocates the library materials budget, it is divided according to an allocation formula.  Each department is informed of its allocation.  The librarians and liaisons are responsible for expending the departmental allocations for books and audiovisuals.

To help the departments expend their allocations, the library has an approval slips program with YBP.  Slips are received biweekly by the Collection Management and Acquisition Department.  The slips are divided by departments and sent to the librarians who send them to their liaisons.

The librarians receive requests from their liaisons.  The librarians send enough requests to the Collection Management and Acquisitions Department to expend the departments' allocations.  The staff of the Collection Management and Acquisitions Department searches the online catalog so that duplicates are not ordered.  Any duplicate is returned to the liaison informing him/her that the request is already part of the collection.  The remaining requests are ordered from vendors that PASSHE has contracts with or if the request is not available from these sources, other sources such as Amazon, publishers, and out-of-print dealers are contacted.  The budget is expended by fiscally sound methods so that the library can add as many books and audiovisuals as possible.

The staff receives the ordered requests, prepares all invoices for payment, and verifies the purchasing card statements.  Materials are sent to the Bibliographic Services Department for processing.  Quarterly reports are produced by Mary Purdy, the Acquisitions technician, and sent to the librarians who distribute them to the liaisons.  The Collection Management Librarian, Jessica Marshall, also creates statistical reports for the departments which are preparing for either an accreditation or program review.