We order books, e-books, videocassettes, DVD's, scores, music CD's, CD-ROM's, maps, microfilms, slides, and access to World-Wide Web resources.

Ordering consists of deciding if we should place orders, actually placing orders, and notifying concerned parties of what actions we've taken with orders.

Academic departments directly chose and control what is ordered, so Acquisitions is in some ways acting as a purchasing agent. This makes sense if you think about what you would do if you were buying something for someone else.

Notifications that items have arrived in the library are done as a part of ordering, but Accounting & Receiving and Acquisitions Receiving handles all actual goods.

Student Ordering Tasks

• Stamping orders in---Stamping the date on orders and keeping statistics about orders.

• catalogusmai searching---Searching in the online catalog to make sure we don't already have the item.

• Collection Manager (BNA database) searching---Searching in our primary vendor's database to see if the books are available from them and how much of a discount we can get.

• Amazon searching---Searching Amazon.com to find information about a book.

• Returning slips to departments---Sending slips back to departments notifying them of the status of their orders.

• Returning notifies to requesters---Sending slips back to the people who originally wanted an item to let them know that we have it.

• Making inquiry calls---Calling publishers to get information.

• Writing inquiry letters---Writing (or e-mailing) publishers to find information.

• Tracking down vendor/publisher/author info---Searching various print and online sources to locate people and publishers who we want to order things from.

• Preparing contact sheets--Filling out forms to prepare orders.

• Order Follow-up--Doing procedures to resolve old orders that have never been filled.

• Order Creation--Creating order records in the library system.

• Special ordering--Doing tasks associated with purchasing scores, CD's, videos, CD-ROM's, music scores, etc.

• Processing vendor notices--Recording and acting on information about our orders that our vendors send to us.

Vendors

• Blackwell North America (BNA)---Our primary vendor; we purchase 90% of our materials from them. They have an online database called Collection Manager which departmental liaisons use to request materials, and which we search. If we find a record for a book in it which states that the book is available, we automatically send the order to them.

• We also order materials from numerous other vendors as required.

Order Types

• Web orders are submitted via the world wide web and printed from a Microsoft Access database.

• Collection Manager orders are submitted via Collection Manager and printed from Collection Manager.

• Form orders are pre-printed slips, a form of ordering which is now obsolete.

• BRF's (Book Request Forms) are print forms which information is written or typed onto. These are also now obsolete.

Common Ordering Problems

When doing any kind of ordering work, these are the types of problems you should be looking for:

• Orders don't indicate what fund is to pay for them. Orders lack signatures authorizing them.

• Order lacks essential information about what is being ordered.

• Information is almost, but not quite exactly right.

• Something from one pile of orders (or papers or notices) is mixed up in another pile.