Faculty Information Commons
Collection Development
The information on this page is designed to help you better understand how the Information Commons adds materials to its collections. We hope that an increased familiarity with the Information Commons' resources and development processes will promote a desire to be involved in those processes. We'd love to hear from you: suggested titles to add, publishers--new or old--whose materials you can generally recommend, new courses being offered, even assumptions you have about our holdings--anything that will help us develop even higher quality collections.
Request Materials
You may request materials for addition to the Information Commons' collections in several ways: call (2300) or email the Faculty Info Commons, use the web form, or, best yet, stop in and see us!
Automated Processes
Automated ordering processes save time and provide more consistency in acquisition; therefore, we try to acquire as many materials as possible through such means. Blanket orders, standing orders and a notification plan are the automated tools that the Information Commons uses.
A blanket order is an agreement with a publisher to purchase all materials published. The agreement also arranges for automatic shipping of materials, so we do not have to place an order for each title. Some publishers do not have the technical means to arrange automatic shipment. In that case, we still purchase all the publisher produces, but must initiate the ordering ourselves. This is done on a biannual basis. The file below contains a list of those publishers from which we receive (or order) all published materials (excluding curriculum: e.g., Sunday School lessons).
Standing orders are similar to blanket orders, but are limited to a particular set. In other words, we receive all materials published within, for example, a specific monographic series.
Yankee Book Peddler (YBP) is a service provider (or what in the library sphere we call a "jobber") that interfaces with many publishers. They do the work of creating lists of material, that these publishers are producing, in which we might be interested (according to a profile that we have on file with them). Some of you in the past may have been handed a pile of yellow slips with titles on them and asked to indicate which books you thought should be added to the collection. These slips are our notification from YBP of materials recently produced. They have a web interface that allows us to easily order the materials in which you have indicated interest. Furthermore, because of an increasing technical sophistication on both YBP's & our parts, we can create electronic lists that can be used through a web interface to replace the distribution of yellow slips. We are looking for volunteers to look through these lists, acting as subject specialists, and respond in the same kind as with the slips. If you would like to participate, please contact the Faculty Info Commons; the lists can be tailored to your specific area(s) of interest/research. The file below identifies the publishers of materials concerning which we are notified. These publishers are producing material in which we have a definite interest, but whose whole output does not meet our development needs, so we do not wish to make arrangements for a blanket order.