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LMU Librarians' Guide to Liaison Work

This LibGuide is a resource to support the collection development and outreach activities of LMU librarian liaisons.

The Principles

Book selection remains the core of collection development work. We are thoughtfully building the collection our current and future users want, need, and deserve. Like all things, selection takes time, you get better with practice, and you get out of it what you put in. Over time, it helps to build your knowledge in several areas:

  • Know Your Users: Who are the faculty in your departments? What are their research interests? What courses are offered? How many students are there in the major or minor?
     
  • Know Our Collection: What are the LC classification areas for your disciplines? How many books do we own in those areas? How much are they used (in print or online)?
     
  • Know the Discipline: Are your disciplines primarily monograph or journal based? Are there differences by subdiscipline? Who are the major publishers? Which ones have higher or lower reputations? What are the new trends in the discipline and how are those areas affecting LMU?
No one expects perfection. No one expects all liaisons to be subject experts in their disciplines; if you are, that's great as it will give you a head start, but most liaisons work without deep subject expertise. We need librarians who are willing to be inquisitive, to bring themselves up to speed, and to dedicate the time and energy to building the collection for our users.
 

E-books

E-book Annual Updates

We acquire annual collection updates on the following e-book collections:

  • Bloomsbury (Biblical Studies, Philosophy, Theology, Cultural History, Drama Online, including Nick Hern Books and Oberon Books

  • Business Expert Press Library

  • Sage Reference & Academic Books

  • Springer Nature Link (Springer and Palgrave titles)

  • Wiley Online Library

Evidence-Based Acquisition (EBA) Programs

  • Cambridge EBA

  • JSTOR EBA

  • Oxford EBA

Standing Orders

Why should you put a set or series on standing order?
  • Fulfillment of continuation orders is prioritized by our vendors. Approval plans come next, followed by firm orders. So standing orders are most likely to be filled. Also, publisher print runs are smaller than ever, so fulfillment of firm orders can be significantly delayed, requiring us to go to the second-hand market, adding delay and cost.
  • Researching and processing fill-in for collection lacunae is time consuming and therefore expensive.
  • Standing orders remove the affected series from the approval profiling pool. Even though it seems that most volumes of a series come on auto-ship anyway, content inconsistencies or the publisher’s quirky interpretation of the series theme can make certain volumes bounce and not be profiled, leading to gaps in our holdings.
  • Any set or series where we should receive all or most (more than 75%) of the volumes should be placed on standing order.

How do you place something on standing order?

  • Use the record for the volume from GOBI for reference - you'll need the YBP Series ID (in addition to the other bibliographic information.)
  • Complete the web form below. 

Questions? Ask Glenn or Nataly.