Liaison Toolkit

Although staff members with selection responsibilities may have different primary supervisors, collection development activities are supervised by the Head, Collections, Acquisitions, and Resource Sharing Department (Megan Gaffney).

New selectors should work with the Head, Collections, Acquisitions, and Resource Sharing Department to (1) be added to the lib-selectors email list, (2) gain access to the Collection Management shared Google Drive where many important documents are archived, and (3) set up their accounts, notifications, and funds in the GOBI platform.

The guides and instruction sheets on this page are designed to support your selection and collection review activities.

New Policies for FY25

• Limit of 50 items per fund/per week
• Last day for orders to be submitted this fiscal year is March 31st, 2025 (does not apply to Special Collections)
• You are responsible for checking your fund balance as you go - if you over-expend your fund, your allocation the following year may be reduced
• New vendors need to be submitted to Acquisitions for approval before orders are committed (Special Collections & Museums)

Reminders of Existing Policies

• Check all titles against our eBook package list (see list in eBook section below and file in document list)
• Check for duplicates before submitting
• Choose eBooks instead of print when available
• Add notes to orders when requesting rush, notify, course reserves, or to justify any purchase that requires a policy exception
• Items that cost more than $1000 require approval from the Head of Collections, Acquisitions, and Resource Sharing department, currently Megan Gaffney (policy established years back that hasn't been stated recently)
• As the Head of Collections, Megan is the ex officio selector for your discipline and reserves the right to to change appropriate library materials to that discipline without your approval or notification that she has done so (policy established years back that hasn't been stated recently)

Please see the full Ordering Updates & Reminders document below for more details about current policies, including what counts as a duplicate and what doesn't

Monograph firm orders are purchased by selectors throughout the fiscal year.  Continuing resources are managed by the Collections, Acquisitions, and Resource Sharing Department.  Due to a substantial budget reduction in FY21, we are currently not beginning new subscriptions to print or electronic materials.  Please send request to the Collections and Electronic Resources Management (CERM) team at lib-collman@udel.edu.  We maintain a "wishlist" of subscriptions.

At the end of the year, there is often funding for larger one-time purchases.  Our current priority is acquiring backfiles of journals or book archives to facilitate print withdrawals or transfers.  We also may acquire archival collections, like those from AM or ProQuest.  Send requests to CERM, lib-collman@udel.edu .

We have access to e-books in a few ways: package purchases, firm orders, demand-driven acquisitions (DDA), evidence-based acquisitions (EBA), and through several open access (OA) agreements.

• DDA titles are put into a pool of accessible titles in our catalog and do not get purchased until/unless someone uses the resource.
• EBA titles are added to our catalog for a subscription year and then the titles of our choosing (typically the highest usage) get purchased outright at the end of the year.

When firm ordering any book in any format, our eBook package list must be consulted to ensure we are not duplicating titles we already have -or- will be receiving as part of a package

Current package list

• ACLS Humanities eBooks collection (HEB) – not reflected in GOBI
• Berghahn Books / 2022-2024 only, not adding new publications
• Cambridge University (*see exclusions below) / 2023-2024 only, not adding new publications
• Central European University Press / 2022-2025
• Columbia University Press / 2022-2025
• Cornell University Press / 2022-2025
• Duke University Press / 2022-2025
• Edinburgh University Press / 2022-2025
• Fordham University Press / 2022-2025
• Harvard University Press / 2022-2025
• Lynne Rienner Publishers / 2023-2025
• NYU Press / 2022-2025
• Oxford Handbooks Online (EBA) / full collection
• Oxford University Press (US) / Oxford Scholarship Online EBA (*see exclusions below) / 2021 to 4/30/25 only
• Penn State University Press / 2022-2025
• Princeton University Press / 2022-2025
• Routledge / 2019-2026 (EBA)
• Rutgers University Press / 2022-2024
• ScienceDirect (eBooks, not the journals)
• Springer (*see exclusions below)
• Stanford University Press / 2022-2025
• SUNY Press / 2024-2025
• University of California Press / 2022-2025
• University of Chicago Press / 2022-2025
• University of Hawaii Press / 2022-2025
• University of Pennsylvania Press / 2022-2025
• University of Texas Press / 2022-2025
• University of Toronto Press / 2022-2025
• Yale University Press / 2022-2025

Open Access Agreements
We have purchased access to specific eBooks under these OA support plans – these will be visible in DELCAT and are specific to our current holdings; GOBI may not show holdings for all of these. If you see we have an open access eBook in DELCAT in one of these collections, we consider it a duplicate.

• JSTOR Path to Open
• MIT Press Direct to Open
• Punctum Books Open Access
• University of Michigan Press Open Access

DDA Plans
We have 2 DDA plans. These titles will be visible in both GOBI and DELCAT if we already have holdings. If GOBI shows that DDA is available for the title you’re interested in but we don’t already have it in our pool, that title should be pushed to the DDA pool instead of purchased. If the title is needed immediately or for a class with unlimited users, it’s okay to order it directly as long as you include a note.

• JSTOR DDA
• EBSCOhost DDA

*Exclusions for particular packages

• Cambridge University Press exclusions:
  • Textbooks
  • Multi-volume reference
  • Cambridge Histories
  • Cambridge Companions Online
• Oxford University Press (US) / Oxford Scholarship Online
  • 2 Psychology Series excluded:
    • Treatments that Work
    • Programs that Work
• Springer - these collections are excluded:
  • Education
  • Social Sciences
  • History
  • Religion & Philosophy
  • Law & Criminology
  • Medicine

Complete information about Gifts is available on Google Drive, including instructions for liaisons, the Gift Decision Form to be completed for each gift received, and sample wording.

The Library's Gift of Library Materials Policy is linked on the website.

NOTE: this information is outdated and will be refreshed when selectors restart collection review activities.

- Respond promptly to requests for purchase.

- Perform at least one scan of available resources in the field per year and recommend resources for trial.

- Provide input on interdisciplinary resources on trial.

- Document your considerations for selecting materials in your area(s) in terms of priorities, selection aids, etc. In your documentation, consider how this work furthers the Library, Museums & Press's Research, Scholarship, and Discovery strategic direction.

- Document your process for making collection review decisions in terms of condition, currency, circulation statistics, ILL data, national holdings, etc. Similarly, document your collection review progress.

- Communicate curricular changes or trends to collection management team via annual reports or other mechanisms.

- Participate in shared decision making related to collection development policies and resources.

- Provide research consultations via email, online conferences, and in person by faculty and students in your department.

Create a LibGuide on an emerging or specialized topic.