The Approval Program and Gifts Team is a self-directed work team responsible for the planning, coordination, and performance of all operational activities supporting the Libraries' approval program and gifts-in-kind. We also perform administrative and personnel functions within the team.
Approval plans offer academic libraries a means to assure prompt and thorough, and many times discounted, coverage of current publications across languages, disciplines, and publishers. Materials are received by the library in regular and timely automatic shipments as books are published.
Shipments are comprised of titles hand-selected by the vendors' professional bibliographers in accordance with detailed profiles. Profiles are developed by the library's collection development specialists and cover both subject (Library of Congress classification schedule) and non-subject (format, price, translation, content level, imprint date, etc.) parameters.
Once materials are received and processed, they are placed on display for our subject librarians to review. The majority of titles are accepted and added to the collection. A small number are rejected for a variety of reasons and, depending on the agreement made with the vendor, may be returned.
Our profiles also identify a number of materials for which notification slips will be sent instead of books. Slips provide detailed bibliographic information for each specific title. These slips are also reviewed by librarians and items may be ordered. Receipts generated from these orders are not a part of the approval plan. But analysis of these receipts by Collection Development may result in future adjustments to the approval plan profiles.