Collection Management

Monographs are books. And we currently have over 1.2 million physical monographs in our collection, as well as tens of thousands of ebooks available online.

You can use OneSearch or the catalog advanced search to look for ebooks. Or you can search directly on our various ebook platforms.

• Individual Monographs Purchased by Librarians

In most years, subject librarians are allocated a certain amount of money for each of their subject areas. The amount of money varies by department. Librarians use this money to fulfill the teaching, research, and learning needs of the users in their area. These needs may be both immediate and project long-term needs. Typically, librarians are also building strengths within their designated area for specific research areas.

• Individual Monographs Purchased by User Request

When submitting an interlibrary loan request, users may indicate that an item be considered for purchase. If the item meets certain criteria, it will be ordered and added to the collection. Users may also directly request their subject librarian purchase a monograph. The library currently allocates money each year to fulfill these types of requests.

• Demand-/Patron-Driven Acquisition (DDA/PDA) (ebooks)

The library currently operates a demand-driven acquisition program. In this program, we pre-load our catalog with electronic books that match specified criteria. Although these books have not yet been purchased, users are able to see, view, print, and download them.By using the books in a certain way (printing, downloading, reading for a certain period of time, or viewing a certain number of pages), the user "triggers" a purchase.

Using DDA/PDA programs allows the library to make a broad number of books available without needing to commit money to purchasing. And then we are only required to purchase books used by our patrons.

One downside to the program is limited control beyond initial criteria the library has over which books are purchased.Another downside is that at times this program can be very popular (i.e., many books triggered in a semester) and require the library to balance making as many books available as possible while properly budgeting for this just-in-time model of collections.

• Evidence-Based Acquisition (EBA) - ebooks

Evidence-based acquisition programs provide a mixture of single-title ordering and DDA ebook programs. With these programs, the library commits a designated amount of money upfront to purchase books from an organization (generally a single publisher, but aggregators like Project Muse and JSTOR also have EBA programs).

In return, the library receives access to a number of books equivalent to a multiple of the committed money (e.g., with one company, we receive 1-year access to books equivalent to 22x the committed amount of money). At the end of the 12-month period, the library selects books valued at the amount of committed money. 

• Ebook Packages

The library infrequently purchases curated collections of ebooks. These are typically from a single publisher with a focus on a specific subject area.

• Subscription

The library has a few ebook subscription packages. These packages allow for much more content annually than the amount of money required to gain access. However, the library retains no content at the end of the subscription period.