Faculty Resources: Acquisitions

Each department and interdisciplinary program is allocated funds to purchase books and media. Departments may also make recommendations about periodical titles for addition to the collection, but due to high periodical costs, this is not always immediately possible. To supplement your disciplinary publishing catalogs, you may wish to browse CHOICE Reviews, a resource for locating reviews of scholarly resources. 

From order to receipt, the turnaround time for typical items is one month for hardbacks and two months for paperbacks. Hardbacks are encouraged for long-term use in the library. Because paperbacks have a shorter shelf-life, we use our vendors’ bindery option for all paperbacks that we order. The additional bindery time necessary for paperbacks delays the receipt of these orders by a 4-6 weeks. Materials that are out-of-print, in high demand, rare, or have some other special characteristics, may take longer to acquire.

Place orders with the Library Acquisitions Manager, Marti Carwile (x2191), libacq@monmouthcollege.edu.

When ordering materials, please provide as much information as possible, to ensure that the item ordered is exactly the item requested:  Author, Title, Publisher, year of publication, edition, list price, and ISBN.

• Requestor information: Your name and department, for allocation purposes. If you have more than one library allocation that you use, please specify the allocation fund that should be charged. Please let Marti know if your department has a specific individual who approves all departmental orders.
• If materials are needed immediately (i.e., earlier than the typical 1-2 month order/processing period), please make this clear when ordering.
• If they should be placed directly on Course Reserve, please let us know when placing the order.
• If other special circumstances exist, please state this at the time of ordering.

We recommend the following schedule for the use of departmental allocations:

• December 1st: 40% of your allocation should be expended.
• February 1st: 80% of your allocation should be expended.
• April 1st: 100% of your allocation should be expended.

At each deadline, departmental chairpersons will be sent reports of year-to-date encumbered amounts. If materials ordered prior to June 30 do not arrive until after July 1, then the item may be charged to the next fiscal year.

If you have questions, please contact Marti Carwile (x2191), Hewes Library Acquisitions Manager, libacq@monmouthcollege.edu.