A Regional Cooperative Acquisition Program for Monographs BY DAVID A. KRONICK, PH.D., Library Director
The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio San Antonio, Texas ABSTRACT A cooperative acquisition program for monographs for the twelve resource libraries in Region IX of the Regional Medical Library Network is described. Each of the participating libraries has agreed to purchase all books of an assigned publisher which fall within a prescribed subject-format profile. It is hoped that this will help to reduce unnecessary duplication and contribute toward the development of resources in the region.
RESOURCE sharing has long been regarded as an important element in library management. The growth in the volume of literature published and the increasing costs of informational materials,accompanied by static and even reduced library budgets, have increased the need to develop more effective means for this kind of sharing. Some progress has been made in sharing journal resources through various kinds of cooperative programs like union lists of serials. Such a program was instituted several years ago among the twelve resource libraries which make up the South Central Regional Medical Library Program (TALON), Region IX of the Regional Medical Library Network. Under this program each of the resource libraries was asked to make a commitment to continue its subscriptions to specific journal titles. The other participating libraries were thus relieved of retaining those titles in their collections while they could still have the assurance that they were availablq in the region. A journal title commitment by one library does not mean that the other resource libraries cannot add or retain that title in their collection, but merely that they are free not to add it or to retain it if they wish. The program has enabled the participating libraries to make more effective use of journal funds and to increase the available journal resources in the
region [1]. Monograph acquisition has appeared to be singularly resistant to cooperative arrangements of this kind. Sharing programs are usually based on postacquisition activities such as union catalogs, bibliographic centers, and acquisition lists, which Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 67(3) July 1979
provide notification of availability of an item after it has been acquired. Other programs are based on assignment of subject responsibilities, which are difficult to implement, particularly when the participating libraries have common subject interests. The Farmington Plan was an effort to improve coverage of foreign-language materials in U.S. libraries by assigning responsibility on both a subject and a geographic basis. It was formally terminated after some twenty-five years because it was generally regarded as not having achieved its objectives. The plan fostered acquisition of marginal materials because there were few qualitative controls, and it was not reliable in providing adequate coverage. Another apparent problem was the absence of effective standards of evaluation. Edelman in his review of the demise of the Farmington Plan stated: "A major research effort should be developed to try to come up with a solution to the problem of evaluating acquisitions programs.... It is a key issue in library operation and an essential element in any cooperative venture" [2]. The resource libraries in TALON have long been concerned about developing an effective method for sharing monograph acquisition responsibilities which was comparable to the TALON program for journals. Although each library has limited resources in relation to the total number of available monographs which are relevant to its needs, collectively the libraries could easily acquire most if not all relevant monographs if duplication were kept to a minimum. The National Library of Medicine (NLM), which has a policy of collecting comprehensively in a similar subject scope, added 11,937 monographs in 1974 [3]. In the year 1971 just three of the resource libraries-The University of Texas health science libraries at Dallas, Galveston, and San Antonio-collectively added 13,889 titles. Another way to estimate this potential for a cooperative program is to examine the collective expenditure for monographs of ten TALON resource libraries-which for 1970-1971 was almost $260,000. This amount would have sufficed
297
DAVID A. KRONICK
to purchase the entire output, as reported in 1974, of both U.S. and British books classed in medicine and science. U.S. book production reported in 1974, including new titles and new editions, totaled 2,281 in medicine and 3,049 in science [4], both subject areas covering a much broader scope than that encompassed by any health sciences library. British book production in the same period covering the same general scope totaled 2,557 [5]. At an average cost of $20 per volume for books in this class in 1974 [6], the entire U.S. and British output in these subject areas could have been purchased for $150,000, well below the total amount spent for monographs by all the TALON resource libraries. This analysis of course ignores completely the inevitability of and the necessity for duplication among the libraries, but points up the potential that exists for cooperative programs.
hibits a Bradfordian distribution when publishers are ranked by their citation productivity in much the same way as journals [8]. Librarians tend to differentiate strongly between books and journals as information sources, both bibliographically and administratively. A case can be made, however, for treating a commitment to the monographic output of a specific publisher, particularly if defined in terms of subject scope, in much the same way we would treat a subscription to a journal. In the latter case we commit ourselves to the entire output of articles for that journal, basing our choice on our judgments about its subject relevance and the past
performance and reputation of the journal editors and publisher. A commitment to the output of a particular monographic publisher could be made on similar grounds, although admittedly, the decision would differ somewhat in scope. In a cooperative acquisition agreement which was based on publisher, Library A, for example, would agree to purchase all the books within a defined profile issued by Publisher X, and Library B would agree to purchase those by Publisher Y. If Library A then was ambivalent about adding a Y book, it could omit it and still be assured that the book was being added at Library B, and vice versa. This method provides an objective criterion-the publisher-for decision making both at the time of selection and at the time of interlibrary loan. If, however, the publisher was to be the only variable in the cooperative acquisition profile, the other variables-for example, subject, format, reading, and collecting levels-would have to be held constant, and substantial agreement on these factors would have to be achieved. To acquire the necessary profile data, therefore, a questionnaire was distributed to the TALON resource libraries. Sixty-seven subject areas were selected from Library of Congress and NLM major subject classes as representing the primary collecting areas for the participating libraries. Four standard collecting levels were defined (skeletal, reference, research, and comprehensive* [9], and the respondents were asked to rate each subject class in accordance with their acquisition policy. A majority of the libraries agreed on collecting levels for fifty-nine of the subjects, with unanimity on twenty-eight. The final profile included those subjects on which there was substantial agreement that
OBJECTIVES AND RATIONALE In order to design a cooperative acquisition program which would permit each library to meet its own collecting requirements yet still expand and enrich the collective resources of the region, the following objectives were established: 1. To increase the number of separate monographs available in the region for resource sharing. 2. To eliminate unnecessary duplication of infrequently used materials as much as possible. 3. To distribute equitably the responsibility for resource development in the region, based on the ability of each participating library to support the program. 4. To increase the predictability of the availability of a particular monograph at a particular library in the region. 5. To reduce to the degree possible subjectivity in making assignments for acquisition responsibility. Assignments can be made on the basis of any one or all of a number of acquisition profile parameters, including subject, publisher, language, format, and country of origin. Studies have shown that health sciences libraries tend to be highly similar with regard to subject and that allocation on a subject basis may not be a feasible method of resource sharing [7]. Standard monographs will, of course, tend to be purchased by all the resource libraries, although following Bradford's law, dupli*The term comprehensive was selected as being more cation will tend to decrease as the monographs than exhaustive, according to usage in both descriptive move away from this central core. A recent study the MLA Handbook [9] and the Washington University did indeed show that monographic literature ex- Medical Center Library Manual [10].
298
Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 67(3) July 1979
REGIONAL ACQUISITION OF MONOGRAPHS TABLE I SUBJECTS REPORTED BY LIBRARIES AS COLLECTED AT LEVELS OTHER THAN RESEARCH
TABLE 2 DISAGREEMENT ON PROFILE FORMATS TO BE EXCLUDED
Collection Level Class
Libraries Responding
Subject Reference Comprehensive
Yes No
QX Parasitology W Medical profession WA Public health WE Musculoskeletal system ZW Medical bibliography
1 3 2
Books priced at $100 list price or more Spiral-bound books
6 4
5 6
1
regional collecting should be at the research level. The profile is represented almost entirely by the broad classes in the NLM classification, with the exceptions of WU (oral surgery and dentistry) and WY (nursing), in which some of the participants did not have teaching programs, and WX (hospitals), in which four of the respondents indicated they collected at the reference level. The profile includes only five subjects in which there was not complete agreement (Table 1). The data on output by publisher were compiled initially from an analysis of two of the machinereadable data bases which had been collected for a regional union catalog of monographs [11]. The imprints in the collections of The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) and The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA) were analyzed by publisher for each of the three years 1973-1975 and averaged to produce a ranking of publisher by title output. It was recognized that these data were open to some questions, first because each of the libraries may not have acquired all of the publisher's titles in scope, and second because the analysis did not take duplication into consideration. That is, the analysis ignored the possibility that, although each library may have acquired 50 books from a publisher, the actual number of unique titles acquired by both UTMB and UTHSCSA could range anywhere from 50 to 100, depending on the degree of duplication. However, a hand tally for the same years of a sample of the current catalogs of the publishers on the final list (seventeen out of fifty-five) indicated that, although there were some changes in rank order, these were relatively minor, that is, a change of only one position for nine publishers. The final list of publishers included in the profile numbered fifty-five. These publishers were Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 67(3) July 1979
arranged in relative rank order in five groups according to estimated output of titles per year, as follows:
Over 50 titles Group I 20-50 titles Group II 10-19 titles Group III 5-9 titles Group IV Group V Under 5 titles The list includes all of the major medical book publishers in the United States and Britain and many of the minor ones. What is not clear is what proportion of the total acquisition activity of any particular library is represented by these fifty-five publishers.* A rough tally of the titles, listed by publisher, added in the UTHSCSA Library would seem to indicate that these fifty-five publishers account for over two-thirds of all the titles added in any single year. There was general agreement on the formats and reading levels to be excluded from the profile. They included: 1. Reprints 2. Multimedia formats 3. Programmed texts 4. Books for lay readers 5. Fiction 6. High school or college-level texts or manuals 7. Materials not in Englisht 8. Loose-leaf publications. There was substantial disagreement on only two of the formats considered, which were therefore not excluded froml the profile (Table 2). Publishers were assigned to each of the resource libraries, one publisher from each of the five groups. The order of assignments was based on the library's rank in terms of an average number of *Copies of the acquisition profile are available from the author upon request. tMonographic materials in foreign languages are unlikely to be added in the region in any case [ 12] or to be produced by the profile publishers.
299
DAVID A. KRONICK
book use, a subject on which our knowledge is rather meager. The proposal covers only those subject areas for which material is collected at a research level and ignores that material which is required at a more selective level. However, most of these materials should be available from other points in the library network. The program covers only the high-volume publishers, although it appears likely that they publish a substantial portion of the titles added in any particular year. Until more reliable data are available, however, the program forms a basis on which acquisition responsibilities can be allocated and on which resources can be shared. Moreover, it provides an objective basis on which the program can be monitored and evaluated. The TALON Union List of DISCUSSION AND SUMMARY Monographs, which is now in its fifth edition, is from machine-readable records and can compiled Although the program does not assure the addition of all the books which the resource libraries contribute toward this kind of review and evaluawould consider appropriate to be added at the tion. In summary then, a cooperative acquisition research level, it does provide the libraries with for monographs has been designed in program greater latitude in rejecting some of the marginal books by those publishers for which the other which the resource libraries in Region IX have libraries are committed. Available funds can then agreed to purchase all the books which fall within a be concentrated on high-use materials, with some prescribed profile and are issued by those publishassurance that the other material will be available ers which have been assigned to them. The publishin the region. The plan should also provide for ers selected for the program were ranked in order broader coverage of a selected group of publishers of the average number of titles from each of them who have been recognized as meeting a large part the libraries had acquired over several years. Assignment of publishers from this list was made of the collecting needs of the libraries. Evaluation of the program can be made in terms on the basis of each library's rank in a list of of the frequency with which publisher is used as a numbers of monographs added in an average year. The program is intended to limit but not to location device in interlibrary loan requests and in eliminate duplication. Each library is free to add terms of the success or failure of this approach. The availability of machine-readable data for whatever titles it wishes outside of its commitment. many of the participating libraries makes possible Eventually the program should enable the particicomparison by imprint years of the publisher pants to predict with some certainty which library commitments each library has made. Other ques- is likely to hold a particular title. This can be a real advantage, because there will continue to be a tions, however, still remain to be answered. The question has been raised about what options considerable time lag before records can be added a committed library has for lending these materials to union lists, at least until on-line services become which may be in demand on its own campus. Each more generally available. library is, of course, free to make a determination REFERENCES with regard to each individual request. A library still would regard itself as having a greater obliga1. JONES, C. L. A cooperative serial acquisition program: thoughts on a response to mounting tion to provide these titles, rather than those for fiscal pressures. Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 62: 120which they had no commitment. This may not, 123, Apr. 1974. however, be a serious problem, because these high2. EDELMAN, H. The death of the Farmington Plan. demand materials are most likely to be duplicated. Libr. J. 98: 1251-1253, April 15, 1973. Admittedly, the proposal addresses itself only to 3. NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE. Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1974. Bethesda, Md., 1975. a part of the problem. It is based on limited Bowker Annual of Library and Book Trade information about the size of the universe from 4. TheInformation, 1975. 20th ed. New York, Bowker, which each library selects the materials it needs for 1975. p. 163. its collection, and about the factors which generate 5. Ibid. p. 387.
monographs which each had added in recent years. Each participant was given the opportunity to submit alternatives from the respective publisher groups for those publishers for which they preferred not to make commitments, and exchanges were made where possible. The libraries are free to fulfill their responsibility by acquiring all the books from their assigned publishers within the prescribed profile in any way they wish: individual orders through vendors or publishers, approval plans, blanket orders, and so on. The libraries, however, do have the responsibility of monitoring the program so that all the books within the profile for their publisher commitments are added each year.
300
Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 67(3) July 1979
REGIONAL ACQUISITION OF MONOGRAPHS 6. Ibid. p. 180. 7. KRONICK, D. A., AND BOWDEN, V. M. Management data for collection analysis and development. Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 66: 407-413, Oct. 1978. 8. WORTHIN, D. R. The application of Bradford's law to monographs. J. Doc. 31: 19-25, Mar. 1975. 9. BEATTY, W. K. Technical processing: part 1. Selection, acquisition, and weeding. In: Annan, Gertrude L., and Felter, Jacqueline W., eds. Handbook of Medical Library Practice. 3d ed. Chicago, Medical Library Association, 1970. p. 73. 10. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER Li-
Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 67(3) July 1979
BRARY. Selection and Acquisitions Manual. St. Louis, Mo., 1978. p.4. 11. KRONICK, D. A., AND BOWDEN, V. M. A union catalog of monographs: another approach. Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 66: 281-289, July 1978. 12. DAY, R. A.; BOWDEN, V. M.; AND KRONICK, D. A. Comparison of holdings of NLM (CATLINE) with those of resource libraries. Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 67: 25-30, Jan. 1979.
Received December 4, 1978; accepted January 24, 1979.
301
The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio San Antonio, Texas ABSTRACT A cooperative acquisition program for monographs for the twelve resource libraries in Region IX of the Regional Medical Library Network is described. Each of the participating libraries has agreed to purchase all books of an assigned publisher which fall within a prescribed subject-format profile. It is hoped that this will help to reduce unnecessary duplication and contribute toward the development of resources in the region.
RESOURCE sharing has long been regarded as an important element in library management. The growth in the volume of literature published and the increasing costs of informational materials,accompanied by static and even reduced library budgets, have increased the need to develop more effective means for this kind of sharing. Some progress has been made in sharing journal resources through various kinds of cooperative programs like union lists of serials. Such a program was instituted several years ago among the twelve resource libraries which make up the South Central Regional Medical Library Program (TALON), Region IX of the Regional Medical Library Network. Under this program each of the resource libraries was asked to make a commitment to continue its subscriptions to specific journal titles. The other participating libraries were thus relieved of retaining those titles in their collections while they could still have the assurance that they were availablq in the region. A journal title commitment by one library does not mean that the other resource libraries cannot add or retain that title in their collection, but merely that they are free not to add it or to retain it if they wish. The program has enabled the participating libraries to make more effective use of journal funds and to increase the available journal resources in the
region [1]. Monograph acquisition has appeared to be singularly resistant to cooperative arrangements of this kind. Sharing programs are usually based on postacquisition activities such as union catalogs, bibliographic centers, and acquisition lists, which Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 67(3) July 1979
provide notification of availability of an item after it has been acquired. Other programs are based on assignment of subject responsibilities, which are difficult to implement, particularly when the participating libraries have common subject interests. The Farmington Plan was an effort to improve coverage of foreign-language materials in U.S. libraries by assigning responsibility on both a subject and a geographic basis. It was formally terminated after some twenty-five years because it was generally regarded as not having achieved its objectives. The plan fostered acquisition of marginal materials because there were few qualitative controls, and it was not reliable in providing adequate coverage. Another apparent problem was the absence of effective standards of evaluation. Edelman in his review of the demise of the Farmington Plan stated: "A major research effort should be developed to try to come up with a solution to the problem of evaluating acquisitions programs.... It is a key issue in library operation and an essential element in any cooperative venture" [2]. The resource libraries in TALON have long been concerned about developing an effective method for sharing monograph acquisition responsibilities which was comparable to the TALON program for journals. Although each library has limited resources in relation to the total number of available monographs which are relevant to its needs, collectively the libraries could easily acquire most if not all relevant monographs if duplication were kept to a minimum. The National Library of Medicine (NLM), which has a policy of collecting comprehensively in a similar subject scope, added 11,937 monographs in 1974 [3]. In the year 1971 just three of the resource libraries-The University of Texas health science libraries at Dallas, Galveston, and San Antonio-collectively added 13,889 titles. Another way to estimate this potential for a cooperative program is to examine the collective expenditure for monographs of ten TALON resource libraries-which for 1970-1971 was almost $260,000. This amount would have sufficed
297
DAVID A. KRONICK
to purchase the entire output, as reported in 1974, of both U.S. and British books classed in medicine and science. U.S. book production reported in 1974, including new titles and new editions, totaled 2,281 in medicine and 3,049 in science [4], both subject areas covering a much broader scope than that encompassed by any health sciences library. British book production in the same period covering the same general scope totaled 2,557 [5]. At an average cost of $20 per volume for books in this class in 1974 [6], the entire U.S. and British output in these subject areas could have been purchased for $150,000, well below the total amount spent for monographs by all the TALON resource libraries. This analysis of course ignores completely the inevitability of and the necessity for duplication among the libraries, but points up the potential that exists for cooperative programs.
hibits a Bradfordian distribution when publishers are ranked by their citation productivity in much the same way as journals [8]. Librarians tend to differentiate strongly between books and journals as information sources, both bibliographically and administratively. A case can be made, however, for treating a commitment to the monographic output of a specific publisher, particularly if defined in terms of subject scope, in much the same way we would treat a subscription to a journal. In the latter case we commit ourselves to the entire output of articles for that journal, basing our choice on our judgments about its subject relevance and the past
performance and reputation of the journal editors and publisher. A commitment to the output of a particular monographic publisher could be made on similar grounds, although admittedly, the decision would differ somewhat in scope. In a cooperative acquisition agreement which was based on publisher, Library A, for example, would agree to purchase all the books within a defined profile issued by Publisher X, and Library B would agree to purchase those by Publisher Y. If Library A then was ambivalent about adding a Y book, it could omit it and still be assured that the book was being added at Library B, and vice versa. This method provides an objective criterion-the publisher-for decision making both at the time of selection and at the time of interlibrary loan. If, however, the publisher was to be the only variable in the cooperative acquisition profile, the other variables-for example, subject, format, reading, and collecting levels-would have to be held constant, and substantial agreement on these factors would have to be achieved. To acquire the necessary profile data, therefore, a questionnaire was distributed to the TALON resource libraries. Sixty-seven subject areas were selected from Library of Congress and NLM major subject classes as representing the primary collecting areas for the participating libraries. Four standard collecting levels were defined (skeletal, reference, research, and comprehensive* [9], and the respondents were asked to rate each subject class in accordance with their acquisition policy. A majority of the libraries agreed on collecting levels for fifty-nine of the subjects, with unanimity on twenty-eight. The final profile included those subjects on which there was substantial agreement that
OBJECTIVES AND RATIONALE In order to design a cooperative acquisition program which would permit each library to meet its own collecting requirements yet still expand and enrich the collective resources of the region, the following objectives were established: 1. To increase the number of separate monographs available in the region for resource sharing. 2. To eliminate unnecessary duplication of infrequently used materials as much as possible. 3. To distribute equitably the responsibility for resource development in the region, based on the ability of each participating library to support the program. 4. To increase the predictability of the availability of a particular monograph at a particular library in the region. 5. To reduce to the degree possible subjectivity in making assignments for acquisition responsibility. Assignments can be made on the basis of any one or all of a number of acquisition profile parameters, including subject, publisher, language, format, and country of origin. Studies have shown that health sciences libraries tend to be highly similar with regard to subject and that allocation on a subject basis may not be a feasible method of resource sharing [7]. Standard monographs will, of course, tend to be purchased by all the resource libraries, although following Bradford's law, dupli*The term comprehensive was selected as being more cation will tend to decrease as the monographs than exhaustive, according to usage in both descriptive move away from this central core. A recent study the MLA Handbook [9] and the Washington University did indeed show that monographic literature ex- Medical Center Library Manual [10].
298
Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 67(3) July 1979
REGIONAL ACQUISITION OF MONOGRAPHS TABLE I SUBJECTS REPORTED BY LIBRARIES AS COLLECTED AT LEVELS OTHER THAN RESEARCH
TABLE 2 DISAGREEMENT ON PROFILE FORMATS TO BE EXCLUDED
Collection Level Class
Libraries Responding
Subject Reference Comprehensive
Yes No
QX Parasitology W Medical profession WA Public health WE Musculoskeletal system ZW Medical bibliography
1 3 2
Books priced at $100 list price or more Spiral-bound books
6 4
5 6
1
regional collecting should be at the research level. The profile is represented almost entirely by the broad classes in the NLM classification, with the exceptions of WU (oral surgery and dentistry) and WY (nursing), in which some of the participants did not have teaching programs, and WX (hospitals), in which four of the respondents indicated they collected at the reference level. The profile includes only five subjects in which there was not complete agreement (Table 1). The data on output by publisher were compiled initially from an analysis of two of the machinereadable data bases which had been collected for a regional union catalog of monographs [11]. The imprints in the collections of The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) and The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA) were analyzed by publisher for each of the three years 1973-1975 and averaged to produce a ranking of publisher by title output. It was recognized that these data were open to some questions, first because each of the libraries may not have acquired all of the publisher's titles in scope, and second because the analysis did not take duplication into consideration. That is, the analysis ignored the possibility that, although each library may have acquired 50 books from a publisher, the actual number of unique titles acquired by both UTMB and UTHSCSA could range anywhere from 50 to 100, depending on the degree of duplication. However, a hand tally for the same years of a sample of the current catalogs of the publishers on the final list (seventeen out of fifty-five) indicated that, although there were some changes in rank order, these were relatively minor, that is, a change of only one position for nine publishers. The final list of publishers included in the profile numbered fifty-five. These publishers were Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 67(3) July 1979
arranged in relative rank order in five groups according to estimated output of titles per year, as follows:
Over 50 titles Group I 20-50 titles Group II 10-19 titles Group III 5-9 titles Group IV Group V Under 5 titles The list includes all of the major medical book publishers in the United States and Britain and many of the minor ones. What is not clear is what proportion of the total acquisition activity of any particular library is represented by these fifty-five publishers.* A rough tally of the titles, listed by publisher, added in the UTHSCSA Library would seem to indicate that these fifty-five publishers account for over two-thirds of all the titles added in any single year. There was general agreement on the formats and reading levels to be excluded from the profile. They included: 1. Reprints 2. Multimedia formats 3. Programmed texts 4. Books for lay readers 5. Fiction 6. High school or college-level texts or manuals 7. Materials not in Englisht 8. Loose-leaf publications. There was substantial disagreement on only two of the formats considered, which were therefore not excluded froml the profile (Table 2). Publishers were assigned to each of the resource libraries, one publisher from each of the five groups. The order of assignments was based on the library's rank in terms of an average number of *Copies of the acquisition profile are available from the author upon request. tMonographic materials in foreign languages are unlikely to be added in the region in any case [ 12] or to be produced by the profile publishers.
299
DAVID A. KRONICK
book use, a subject on which our knowledge is rather meager. The proposal covers only those subject areas for which material is collected at a research level and ignores that material which is required at a more selective level. However, most of these materials should be available from other points in the library network. The program covers only the high-volume publishers, although it appears likely that they publish a substantial portion of the titles added in any particular year. Until more reliable data are available, however, the program forms a basis on which acquisition responsibilities can be allocated and on which resources can be shared. Moreover, it provides an objective basis on which the program can be monitored and evaluated. The TALON Union List of DISCUSSION AND SUMMARY Monographs, which is now in its fifth edition, is from machine-readable records and can compiled Although the program does not assure the addition of all the books which the resource libraries contribute toward this kind of review and evaluawould consider appropriate to be added at the tion. In summary then, a cooperative acquisition research level, it does provide the libraries with for monographs has been designed in program greater latitude in rejecting some of the marginal books by those publishers for which the other which the resource libraries in Region IX have libraries are committed. Available funds can then agreed to purchase all the books which fall within a be concentrated on high-use materials, with some prescribed profile and are issued by those publishassurance that the other material will be available ers which have been assigned to them. The publishin the region. The plan should also provide for ers selected for the program were ranked in order broader coverage of a selected group of publishers of the average number of titles from each of them who have been recognized as meeting a large part the libraries had acquired over several years. Assignment of publishers from this list was made of the collecting needs of the libraries. Evaluation of the program can be made in terms on the basis of each library's rank in a list of of the frequency with which publisher is used as a numbers of monographs added in an average year. The program is intended to limit but not to location device in interlibrary loan requests and in eliminate duplication. Each library is free to add terms of the success or failure of this approach. The availability of machine-readable data for whatever titles it wishes outside of its commitment. many of the participating libraries makes possible Eventually the program should enable the particicomparison by imprint years of the publisher pants to predict with some certainty which library commitments each library has made. Other ques- is likely to hold a particular title. This can be a real advantage, because there will continue to be a tions, however, still remain to be answered. The question has been raised about what options considerable time lag before records can be added a committed library has for lending these materials to union lists, at least until on-line services become which may be in demand on its own campus. Each more generally available. library is, of course, free to make a determination REFERENCES with regard to each individual request. A library still would regard itself as having a greater obliga1. JONES, C. L. A cooperative serial acquisition program: thoughts on a response to mounting tion to provide these titles, rather than those for fiscal pressures. Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 62: 120which they had no commitment. This may not, 123, Apr. 1974. however, be a serious problem, because these high2. EDELMAN, H. The death of the Farmington Plan. demand materials are most likely to be duplicated. Libr. J. 98: 1251-1253, April 15, 1973. Admittedly, the proposal addresses itself only to 3. NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE. Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1974. Bethesda, Md., 1975. a part of the problem. It is based on limited Bowker Annual of Library and Book Trade information about the size of the universe from 4. TheInformation, 1975. 20th ed. New York, Bowker, which each library selects the materials it needs for 1975. p. 163. its collection, and about the factors which generate 5. Ibid. p. 387.
monographs which each had added in recent years. Each participant was given the opportunity to submit alternatives from the respective publisher groups for those publishers for which they preferred not to make commitments, and exchanges were made where possible. The libraries are free to fulfill their responsibility by acquiring all the books from their assigned publishers within the prescribed profile in any way they wish: individual orders through vendors or publishers, approval plans, blanket orders, and so on. The libraries, however, do have the responsibility of monitoring the program so that all the books within the profile for their publisher commitments are added each year.
300
Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 67(3) July 1979
REGIONAL ACQUISITION OF MONOGRAPHS 6. Ibid. p. 180. 7. KRONICK, D. A., AND BOWDEN, V. M. Management data for collection analysis and development. Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 66: 407-413, Oct. 1978. 8. WORTHIN, D. R. The application of Bradford's law to monographs. J. Doc. 31: 19-25, Mar. 1975. 9. BEATTY, W. K. Technical processing: part 1. Selection, acquisition, and weeding. In: Annan, Gertrude L., and Felter, Jacqueline W., eds. Handbook of Medical Library Practice. 3d ed. Chicago, Medical Library Association, 1970. p. 73. 10. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER Li-
Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 67(3) July 1979
BRARY. Selection and Acquisitions Manual. St. Louis, Mo., 1978. p.4. 11. KRONICK, D. A., AND BOWDEN, V. M. A union catalog of monographs: another approach. Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 66: 281-289, July 1978. 12. DAY, R. A.; BOWDEN, V. M.; AND KRONICK, D. A. Comparison of holdings of NLM (CATLINE) with those of resource libraries. Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 67: 25-30, Jan. 1979.
Received December 4, 1978; accepted January 24, 1979.
301
