T2: Theory in acquisitions revisited

Pergamon Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 163-171, 1997

Copyright © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved

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FEATHER RIVER INSTITUTE 1996

T2: THEORY IN ACQUISITIONS REVISITED

JOYCE L. OGBURN

Assistant University Librarian

Information Resources and Systems

Old Dominion University

Norfolk, VA 23539

Internet: [email protected]

INTRODUCTION

At the 1993 Feather River Institute I presented a paper that attempted to define some of the principles that underlie the practice of acquisitions. It was hoped that from the exploration of principles that models and theories of acquisitions could eventually be developed. In that paper I asserted that [1]:

"Acquisitions has not been identified strongly with a body of knowledge, principles, and theory. Acquisi- tions processes and procedures have been described fully, but description of the practice is not equivalent to description of the philosophical and theoretical constructs."

This is still true. Applied disciplines such as library science often have difficulty in defining a theoretical base that is unique or strong. There is, however, a strong basis for continuing to develop principles which guide librarianship. Rather than continuing the discussion of theory, which remains elusive, this paper will attempt to elucidate some principles of acquisitions, which will give some guidance in moving into the digital age of libraries. It should be stressed that these principles apply to the function of acquisitions and transcend organizational structures, although they may be used to build the foundation of an organization.

Libraries are now moving swiftly beyond acquiring, accessing, or controlling formal publishing, or what may be called the published record. While libraries continue to have specific missions and goals to guide their acquisitions efforts, the evolution of the Internet has allowed more libraries access to resources that were, at one time, unaffordable or inaccessible. The Internet has also fostered publishing that either never would have occurred in the past or that would have been far less accessible than on the scale possible today.

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164 J.L. OGBURN

The primary business of acquisitions is acquiring resources for the library. This usually entails acquiring services as well. Whereas acquisitions may not judge the value of the resources to the library of the user, the methods and services employed are judged by their value to assist the business of acquisitions. We can ask: What principles will guide acquisitions while navigating the digital future? What does yesterday's practice have in common with today's, and today's with tomorrow's? [2] I will start with reviewing the principles first stated in 1993 and will discuss whether they will remain useful in the digital environment, i.e., will they stand the test of time.

1. Publishing Is Regular, Quantifiable, and Predictable. By this I meant that publishing "is not entirely random and is susceptible to study in a meaningful way... We can understand how publishing changes over t ime" [3].

2. Publications Are Describable, Identifiable, and Accessible. "...it is possible to control and manage publications through description, standard numbers, or other means, and that control facilitates access to publications."

3. No Single Source Can Supply All Possible Publications. "This principle.., tells us that there are choices that must be made in the avenue of supply. No one publisher or distributor controls all publications."

4. Publishing Involves Costs. "...nothing is ever free, and the economics of publishing is an essential component of acquisitions principles."

5. Librarians, Publishers, and Suppliers Share a Common Language. "The common language provides a means for control and communication, and facilitates the information transfer process. An effective interface between parties would not be possible without this principle... [W]e must continue to consult in the evolution of the language of publishing and librarianship."

6. Librarians, Publishers, and Suppliers Serve Different Purposes and Have Different Value Systems and Motivations. "Although we may share the goal of providing information to the user, libraries, suppliers, and publishers exist for different reasons and serve different missions.' '

These principles are those of the delivery aspects of acquisitions. They were the ones that I proposed were underpinning the traditional practices of acquisitions as defined in 1993, and that were guiding the practices of acquisitions in general. I will address each one of these principles, discussing how they apply to the digital world.

Publishing Is Regular, Quantifiable, and Predictable It is still possible to measure publishing output in a general sense. Like many human endeavors,

there are trends publishing follows, and it is still possible to predict in some way. Informal publishing has always been less understood and measured than the formal publishing libraries traditionally acquire. The Internet is now full of informal publications. In the digital environment we may need to make decisions about what resources merit quantification in some way and, if so, how we want to measure them.

Publications Are Describable, Identifiable, and Accessible This is still true. We don' t have to give up hope that digital resources are indescribable,

impossible to find, and inaccessible. One could say that there are far too many to access them all in a meaningful way, and description has become more complex because the nature of the resources

T2: Theory in Acquisitions Revisited 165

vary greatly. On the other hand, the Internet has opened up new possibilities for content, description, access, indexing, and linking of resources. In some ways digital resources are easy to describe, identify, and access.

No Single Source Can Supply All Possible Publications There are still many choices for sources of resources; however, we may find that publishers,

whoever or whatever they are, may be the only source for some resources. But since publishers have been allowing multiple service providers to supply access, software, and licenses for electronic reference databases, it is reasonable to assume that, in the digital world, there won' t be a sole source for every work. We will continue to have choices.

Publishing Involves Costs This principle will never change. Digitizing and the Internet have a cost, although most of us

don ' t have to budget for it yet. Even if publishing electronically eventually reduces costs, there will always be some cost to produce, share, archive, and maintain access to resources.

Librarians, Publishers, and Suppliers Share a Common Language Of all the principles, this one has probably changed the most in 3 years. The Internet has also

spawned a new language and increased the merger of technology and content for published material. In the digital library environment we are having to learn a new language, one that is not necessarily one of description as much as access, not one of content as much as technology. This language is not being developed by librarians, but by the technologists, the producers, and the users. If you doubt that this principle has changed, pick up an issue of Wired and see how much you are attuned to the new language and culture of the Internet.

Librarians, Publishers, and Suppliers Serve Different Purposes and Have Different Value Systems and Motivations

This principle has been challenged a great deal as well. Traditional libraries, publishers, and suppliers have more in common than ever before. The parties still have different purposes and values; however, in many respects they share the motivation for survival. Libraries and suppliers especially have entered into an alliance to maintain traditional kinds of acquisitions methods, avenues of supply, and services, and their futures are intertwined. Librarians should rejoice that vendors are still interested in providing services to them.

NEW PRINCIPLES

Discussion of principles on this high a level may not prove to have a practical use, although on a general level they provide a broad framework and benchmarks for thinking about what we are doing and the nature of what we are acquiring. Knowing where we have been is often as useful as knowing where we are going. At this point I would like to propose another set of principles that can be more practically applied to planning and managing acquisitions operations. The new principles I am about to propose derive directly from the practice of librarianship and are not drawn

166 J.L. OGBURN

from the publishing world. They are rooted in the everyday problems and processes of acquisitions. I will present them four different ways (summarized in Appendix).

The first listing of principles defines the nature of the acquisition process in a library. In the acquisitions function these activities take place:

Assessment of:

• r i sk (is the cost of getting a resource greater than its worth?) • ava i lab i l i ty (is it published and/or available?) • feasibi l i ty (can we get it?)

Prediction of:

• success (which process or method is most likely to work?)

Control of:

• system (what policies, processes, structures, and organizations do we need to put in place to succeed?)

• resource (what is the resource, where is it, and do we keep it?)

Choice of:

• source (where do we get it?) • me thods (how do we get it?) • services (what else do we need to do in order to be successful?)

Validation of:

• existence (does the item exist and are we getting what we think we are?) • de l ivery (did we get the right thing?)

Quantification of:

• p e r f o r m a n c e (was the system successful and adequate?) • costs (how much did it cost us to run the system?)

Discussion of New Principles: What Do They Mean to Us? If one is doing any planning, trying to justify current activities, or re-designing an organization,

using principles will help to validate the directions being taken. They should provide some guidance and allow one to question what is being done now and what should be done in the future. To assist this process, here are the principles with a more detailed explanation of their nature:

1. Assessment. One of the primary responsibilities of the acquisitions function is to assess the relative costs of continuing to try to obtain something that resists acquisition. We make judgments about whether a resource is actually available and whether we are l ikely to get it.


2. Prediction. Through assessment we are able to predict our ability to succeed in acquiring the resources desired.

3. Control. Joe Barker has told us that control is an illusion; however, that doesn ' t mean we shouldn' t try to practice control. By establishing policies, processes, procedures, structures, and organizations in our library, we seek to impose rationality on a function that is often riddled with exceptions and problems. We also have to control the resource through means such as description, creating records of transactions, and through physical processing.

4. Choice. Choice is an essential part of the acquisitions function. We routinely distinguish the good from the bad, the possible from the impossible, the simple from the complex from an array of sources, methods, and services that can be used to acquire resources. Difficult and informed choices are made every day.

5. Validation. Resources are not always what they seem to be, they change their nature, and sometimes they just do not exist any more (or they never did). We have to determine the status of resources, whether they are resident in the library or remote. Additionally, we have to validate that what we have had delivered (or are delivering) is what we think it is.

6. Quantification. Quantifying the process contributes to making good assessments and predicting probable outcomes. Putting numbers to the process facilitates refining the system we have put in place to ensure success. And, finally, understanding our costs gives us the power to control the process, the services, and how they are provided.

To help further in adapting these principles to practice, we can translate them into something more like the language of a planning document. The purpose and function of acquisitions is to:

1. Assess

• the relative r i sk of expenditure of effort in acquiring resources vs. the worth of those resources • the ava i l ab i l i ty of resources, whether published or available to the market • the feasibi l i ty of acquiring resources

2. Predict

• the l ikelihood of success in acquiring resources

3. Control

• the sys tem needed to acquire resources by determining and establishing policies, services, processes, structures, and organizations

• the resource through description, tracking, and validation

4. Choose

• the source for acquiring resources • the me thods for acquiring resources • the services needed to be purchased or developed to acquire, control, and validate resources

5. Validate

168 J.L. OGBURN

• the existence of resources, whether they are extant, whether the resources desired are the ones being acquired, and whether they continue to be the correct resources

• the delivery of resources into the domain of the library

6. Quantify

• the per formance of the system and whether the system is successful and adequate • the costs associated with acquiring resources to refine and improve the system.

If this re-statement is still too long and an easy way to remember the principles is needed, they can be condensed. To this end I offer the principles of A C Q:

1. Assess: the risk and feasibility of acquisition, the availability of the resources, and the chances of success

2. Control : the system and methods needed, the choice of the source, the supporting services, and the resources themselves

3. Quant i fy: the resources, work, and costs involved to perform the business of acquisitions and quantify the measures of success.

After all of this explication and exploration one may still ask, so what? Why should one try to define the principles of acquisitions? As libraries are inventing their futures in the here and now, librarians are struggling with defining the basic role of libraries and the role of the librarian in the digital future. Principles can be a powerful ally in defining what we want from the future. In the future, if we wish libraries to continue to acquire both tangible and electronic resources and to acquire the services that help support them, we need a basis for planning how to continue this role.

Now for acquisitions one can look at several scenarios for the future. In a scenario where vendors provide more services and processing, someone must decide what the library needs to have done, how much it will cost, and how to manage the process. One will have to be able to articulate the rationale behind decisions. If, in the future, more services and processes are automated, someone must develop the specifications and design the system. Someone must always be there to develop the vision of what libraries should be doing and to bring this vision to life.

Whenever librarians express fear of outsourcing, they should instead be expressing joy that there is someone out there willing to provide support services when times are tough or when there is not enough staff to do a job, or when special assistance is needed in conducting a project. Be glad there are choices in this regard, too. Instead of fearing vendors, librarians should pull together with the vendors to develop a future agenda for processes, systems, and technology. We should develop a strong base of commonality, improve together, be more efficient together, and develop principles together.

What will be the future of acquisitions? The future may lie more in records management and description (a sort of merger with cataloging), negotiating and acquiring services (an overlap with almost every other unit of the library), and tracking performance of service providers. This should not sound too unfamiliar. The future also lies in developing a concrete understanding of the technology and software that underlie our systems, our resources, telecommunications, and the Internet. The future belongs to the techno-smart.

An acquisitions function will exist no matter how digital the library gets. There will still be resources to obtain, either for the resident collection or from a remote site. There will still be costs


associated with getting these things, prices to negotiate, and choices to make as to how and where to get them. The need to verify the resource's availability, its continuance, and its location will remain. Perhaps the acquisitions function will encompass the acquiring of more services and fewer i tems--who knows? Who can one say will be performing this duty in the library? The answer to that question may not be clear yet, but someone must be prepared. Will it be you?

NOTES

1. Ogburn, Joyce L. "'Theory in Acquisitions: Defining the Principles Behind the Practice," Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theo~'," 17 (1993), 33-39.

2. In my original paper I postulated some first principles of librarianship as related to the published record. Although they have a different flavor in the digital environment, they probably remain true, at least for the immediate future, in regard to disseminated/published information in almost any form. In 1993 I stated that:

1. "Information as a human artifact and commodity is to be preserved and shared for the common good. Information can be preserved or shared by individual efforts, or through an organized, institutionalized, communal effort. At any stage of the preservation and sharing of information, the value of the information can be increased by the manner in which these two things occur.

2. Authors create, preserve, or interpet information by composition, synthesis, compilation, codification, or other means in order to make a form which is usable by others.

3. Publishers enhance information through the editorial and review process. They also package and market the information in discrete, identificable, tangible forms. Publishers add value to the information by providing an organized, predictable means of dissemination.

4. Librarians provide an additional means of dissemination and add value to the published product by organizing access to it through acquisition, description, classifcation, storage, and preservation. Librarians add value to interpreting information through human or technological mediation."

3. This quote and all that follow in this section are taken from the 1993 paper.

170 J .L . OGBURN

A P P E N D I X 1

Activities of the The purpose and function acquisitions function: Explanation of principles: of acquisitions is to: A C Q principles:

Assessment of: risk (is the cost of getting a

resource greater than its

worth7) availability (is it published and/or available?)

feasibility (can we get it?)

Prediction of: success (which process or

method is most l ikely to

work7)

Control of: system (what policies, pro-

cesses, structures, and organizations do we need to put in place to succeed?)

resource (what is the re-

source, where is it, and do

we keep it?)

Choice of: source (where do we get it?)

methods (how do we get it?) services (what else do

we need to do in order to be successful?)

Assessment: One of the primary responsibilities we have is to assess

the relative costs of continuing to try to obtain some-

thing that resists acquisition. We make judgments about

whether a resource is actually available and whether

we are likely to get it.

Prediction: Through assessment we are able to predict our ability to

succeed in acquiring the resources desired.

Control: By establishing policies, pro-

cesses, procedures, structures, and organizations in our library, we seek to im-

pose rationality on a func-

tion that is often riddled

with exceptions and problems. We also have to con-

trol the resource through

means such as description, creating records of transactions, and through physical

processing.

Assess: the relative r i sk of expendi-

ture of effort in acquiring resources vs. the worth of

resources the availability of resources, whether published

or available to the market

the feasibility of acquiring

resources

Predict: the l ikelihood of success in

acquiring resources

Control: Control: the sys tem needed to acquire the system and methods resources by determining needed, the choice of the

and establishing policies, source, the supporting ser- services, processes, struc- vices, and the resources

tures, and organizations the themselves

resources through descrip-

tion, tracking, and validation

quiring resources the services needed to be purchased

or developed to acquire, control, and validate re-

sources

Assess: the risk and feasibility of acquisition, the availabili ty

of the resources, and the

chances of success

Choice: Choose: Choice is an essential part of the source for acquiring re-

the acquisitions function. We sources the methods for ac-

routinely distinguish the

good from the bad, the possible from the impossible,

the simple from the complex from an array of sources,

methods, and services that can be used made every day.


Activities of the The purpose and function acquis i t ions function: Explanation of principles: of acquisitions is to: A C Q pr inc ip les :

Validation of: existence (does the iteln

exist and are we getting

what we think we are7) delivery (did we get the right thing'?)

Quantification of: performance (was our sys-

tem successful and ade-

quate?) costs (how much did it cost us to do the

task?)

Validation: Resources aren ' t a lways

what they seem to be, they change their nature, and

sometimes they just don ' t exist any more (or they never did). We have to determine the status of resources, whether they are resident in the library or

remote. Additionally, we

have to validate that what

we have had delivered (or are delivering) is what we think it is.

Quantification: Quantifying the process con-

tributes to making good as-

sessments and predicting probable outcomes. Putting

numbers to the process facilitates refining the system we have put in place to ensure success. And finally under-

standing our costs gives us the power to control the pro-

cess, the services, and how they are provided.

Validate: the existence of resources, whether they are extant,

whether the resources desired are the ones being acquired, and whether they

continue to be the correct resources the de l ivery of resources into the domain of the library

Quantify: the pe r fo rmance of the sys-

tem and whether the system

is successful and adequate to meet the needs

the costs associated with

acquiring resources to refine and improve the system

Quantify: the resources, work, and

costs involved to perform the business of acquisitions

and measures of success

Documents

T2: Theory in acquisitions revisited