FAQs

Or, Everything You've Always Wanted to Know...

How to submit a request:

your initials

fund code

location code if the material is to go someplace other than where its classification puts it.

Serials
Give us a bibliographic citation (a flyer, publisher's catalog, record from a bibliographic data base, or legibly hand written) with:

Your initials

fund code

Location code if the material is to go someplace other than where its classification puts it.

Whether you want a standing order (and the beginning volume number).

Whether you want to purchase earlier issues of the serial.

Form selection slips
Vendors gather together information about books that they want to sell and they think we may want to buy. They put the information on multi-part slips and give some indication of the content. The idea is that the easier they make it for us, the more likely we are to buy. To further entice us, the forms were designed to be used as quick and simple order forms though much of the material is now ordered electronically. A form selection program is a part of most approval plans. It identifies those materials not sent on approval because of price, publisher, or other reasons.

We receive form selection slips from three vendors: Harrassowitz in Germany, B.H. Blackwell in England, and Blackwell North America. Each plan has a set of profiles indicating for which subjects forms will be sent. Forms from BHB and from BNA are sorted by profile name and routed to collection managers. Harassowitz forms are sorted by the Harrassowitz classification code. The same subjects may appear in several profiles but only one profile name will print on the form. Be aware of what your colleagues are collecting and forward appropriate forms to them. The profiles can be adjusted to cut out subjects that you don't want to see. Contact Lynne Hayman for copies of the profiles.

Write your Initials and fund code and location if necessary, on the forms and send them to the Acquisitions Dept.

How do I get publisher's catalogs
We receive vast quantities of flyers publishers' catalogs. We try to sort them by subject and send them to collection managers, however, many catalogs cover a wide variety of subjects. These catalogs are put in bins on the approval review tablewhere? for two weeks. Feel free to take catalogs; please do not return them. FAQs
When will my request be ordered?
Monographs: The short answer: Between one day and three weeks.
The long answer: It depends

How many requests are in the pipeline?

How many bibliographic searchers are out sick?

Have the utilities or Pegasus been down for more than a few hours?

How many students are available for searching?

Will the request be checked in BNA's database?

Is there sufficient money in the fund?

Serials: Most serials are ordered within a week of request.

When will it come in?
The short answer: about six weeks. The long answer: It depends.

Were we able to fax the order or transmit it electronically?

Is it coming from overseas? Is it available in a local bookstore?

Is it out of print?

Is the vendor awake?

How can I tell if it is on standing order?
There is no way to tell from the OPAC. Go into the copy holdings record and look for an order linkage. If there is an order linkage, check the order status code. If B is the first character, the material is on standing order. Check the OPR to find details of the order.

How can I tell if it's here?
If it's a monograph, look at the order linkage on the copy holdings screen or at the order status in the OPR.

A = material is on order.

B and D = material is multi-part and some of it is here.

check the OPR to determine which volumes have been received.

V, W, & X = failed orders; the material is not here.

Z = material is here and the order is complete.

Note that Acquisitions does not return requests that turn out to be "we haves" unless you make specific arrangements with Lynne Hayman

How can I get a list of all the orders that are still outstanding on my funds?
Use the appropriate on-line form or ask Virginia Turner or Kim Thompson in Acquisitions to have a list printed for you. There are two types of lists available. The open order list is available for serials or monographs, for open or closed orders, and for an fiscal year. The list will be printed overnight. It will be in expenditure class order and then in Pegasus ID number order, and will contain a brief title and the amount of any encumbrances or payments made this year.

The second type of list is the serials review list. You can request that the titles be printed in order of expense (greatest to least or least to greatest, alphabetically, in call number order, or in Pegasus order number. The list contains title plus pricing information for the current and the previous fiscal year. You can access a third source of information from LTMA. To find monographic series standing orders, give the command LTMA fi ti series open (fund code). For example: LTMA fi tj series open anth. You can also find closed series (LTMA fi ti series closed (fund code). You can find a list of all open publisher plans by searching under LTMA fi ti blanket open (do not use a fund code).

Why does my free balance change radically at times?
Usually it is a combination of several factors which may include: We just placed a lot of orders for material you requested. A lot of volumes of unencumbered material such as sets, monographic series, and approval books have come in. Prices changed. Material was not available and the order was canceled. Or such material is now available and is paid for. A large refund came in. An error was made in inputting the price on one day and corrected the next.

Why are some funds allowed to function in the red and some funds are cut off as soon as they are out of money?
Usually because more volumes in sets, series or on approval came in than the collection manager anticipated. Keeping the material saves the Acquisitions Department the labor intensive work of returning material, only to have to reorder it when new money comes into the fund. In addition, some collection managers are willing to go into debt and face the consequences. Sometimes requests have gone beyond the point of no return -- bibliographic records have been entered in Pegasus -- before we realize that a fund is out of money. We try not to leave dangling records (a.k.a. orphan bibs) in the data base.

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Collection Managers' Manual Procedures Table of Contents
Author: Laura Nanna
Send revisions to Lynne Hayman
Last modified: August 21, 1998