Policies
Acquisition Policy
The Donald B. Watt Library acquisitions process supports and implements the criteria established in the Collection Development policy. Some important principles of that policy and how they affect acquisitions are outlined below.
- Materials are acquired primarily to directly support the coursework at the SIT Graduate Institute
The library can only allocate a limited amount of resources to support faculty research that is not directly related to coursework. Access to advanced research materials are primarily supported through interlibrary loan service or referrals to research collections. - Faculty recommendations are the primary source of building our collection.
Faculty input is vital if our students are to have ready access to useful materials. - Multiple copies of a work are acquired only to meet exceptional user demand.
The budget, size, and usage patterns of the library indicate only one copy per title is usually acquired. - Items normally must be ordered significantly (2-3 months) before they are needed.
In order to efficiently utilize the acquisitions budget and library personnel resources, the library purchases most items through discount wholesalers, which often take 6-8 weeks or more to deliver a requested title. Therefore, the entire process from submitting an order to the library to having the book available for use can easily take three months or more. - The library does not reimburse faculty who purchase a book for the library.
Exceptions can be made only if pre-approved by the library. It is much more efficient and cost-effective for the library to purchase materials directly from wholesale book vendors. The library receives significant discounts, does not pay for tax, shipping or handling, and has time and cost-efficient means to pay these vendors. - Orders for a fiscal year need to be in by April 1st.
Only materials actually physically received by June 30 may be charged to the fiscal year budget ending that date. As it can take 2-3 months to receive a title from a discount vendor, it is very important that all titles ordered for a specific FY budget be received by April 1st. - New serials titles cannot normally be added.
Due to extremely high inflation and limited budgets, new serial titles (e.g. journals) cannot be added without first dropping other titles to cover the cost. (Price increases for academic journals often average 10% or more per year.) - Student Suggestions
The library welcomes recommendations from students as to what titles to purchase. We should note that we do not purchase textbooks, nor does the library maintain a large collection of popular fiction. A collection of popular novels are available for students to borrow and add to. Also students are welcome at the Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro, which houses a large collection of popular fiction and magazines.
For more information contact the librarians.
Phone:
802.258.3354
TTY:
802.258.3388
Fax:
802.258.3248
SMS:
802.277.3204
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Mailing Address:
PO Box 676, Kipling Road
Brattleboro, VT 05302 USA