Demystifying Library Acquisitions: Insight on How Academic Libraries Select Dissertations for Their Collections

With the widening accessibility of electronic theses and dissertations, do academic libraries refrain from purchasing books based on revised dissertations? Do students express this concern when asked why they want to embargo their dissertation? Academic librarians use a variety of mechanisms to identify books for their collections, including approval plans, Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA), Demand Driven Acquisitions (DDA), and others. This presentation will define these terms and processes for those who don’t work in libraries and provide a preliminary examination of data from one academic library book jobber (Yankee Book Peddler, Inc.) to see if the use of approval plans has an impact on libraries’ acquisition of dissertations.