Acquisitions: Core Concepts and Practice

Abstract

Shortly afterward, he encountered a philosophy text, Manuel DeLanda's A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity, whose theories fit right into the conceptual framework he had just finished constructing.1 Given this new knowledge, and given other changes in the library world (the advent of discovery services; the global economic crisis and its adverse, lasting effects on library budgets; the ongoing seismic shift between print and electronic formats, as well as the rise of streaming media), Holden was eager for an opportunity to update his work. [...]to do our work consistently and consistently well, at the very least we need to have some sense of direction and some way of generalizing lessons learned from experience. [...]while the author acknowledges librarians' "reluctance- if not an outright reticence-to engage with theory" (xi), he asserts that we need theory in order to build "a unified way of describing, organizing, and planning the work" (9). Additionally, as space considerations and flat or shrinking budgets make it less feasible for libraries (particularly other than large research libraries) to assemble comprehensive physical collections for the sake of "just in case" access and when electronic articles and books can be purchased and provided almost instantly, libraries rely more on e-resources for the "just in time" access they can support. [...]in Chapter 4, "Assemblages of Feedback and Service" and Chapter 5, "The Acquisitions Assemblage: Putting It All Together," we encounter newer modes of resource acquisition such as demand-driven acquisitions; reliance on interlibrary loan for provision of journal articles; purchase of requested books (not only e-books, but sometimes also print books) in lieu of interlibrary loan; and evidencebased acquisitions, an e-book package subscription model that includes a kind of rent-to-own provision for the most heavily used titles.