Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Help Us Build Marist's Collections

We all know that the Library exists to support Marist's fundamental teaching mission.  But we sometimes forget that faculty may be the first to discover critical gaps in our collections, or hear about important new works we should acquire.  So here's a reminder.  Please regularly submit recommendations, via our Materials Suggestion Form, or by any other reasonable means:
  • email book reviews or publication notices;
  • circle items on a photocopy of a bibliography page or journal review article; 
  • tear out a publishers catalog page, circle your recommendation and send it along (or send the whole catalog!);
  • use the "Notes" field in an Inter-Library Loan request to alert  us that an item would make a good addition to the collection.
Rules of Thumb
  1. Send suggestions to Judy Diffenderfer (Judy.Diffenderfer@marist.edu), Collection Development Librarian, or your department's Library Liaison.  They can expedite purchases, alert you when items arrive on shelf, and/or advise on collection policy for your discipline.
  2. Include your name on everything you send in. 
  3. Supply a good citation. Minimally - title, author(s), publisher and year; better -ISBN.  Or try emailing a reference from Worldcat.org (a massive database of over a billion items held in libraries worldwide).
 Of course the Library faces budget and policy constraints.  We won't be able to acquire every recommendation automatically.  But it's highly valuable to know what faculty are looking for.  Even when we cannot fill requests immediately, we do keep them on file for when opportunities arise down the road.

We are very grateful to the many of you who stay involved in library collection building.  For those who haven't, or haven't recently, please give it a try.  You'll be surprised how easy it is to help strengthen Marist's library in the areas that matter most to you.