ASLA presents a succinct process for Ordering and Acquisitions that seem so obvious. The focus they present in their template are clearly explained. This is beneficial to someone new to writing purchasing policies 😛
I have created a rough flowchart of the purchasing process for my school. Acquisition Workflow-2bchfd7
There one main workflow in practice in my library, but all resources decisions come from conversations the TL has with classroom staff, executive, other library staff or students. The TL makes the final decision of the purchasing of the resource and where to acquire it from. The main variable is where the funding is coming from. As I work in a library that services two schools, one being a government system school and the other a catholic system. I will outline the each different workflow. (I will start with the easy ones and work my way up the difficulty levels). Funding comes in different forms: funding is provided from both schools to generate a combined budget; book club ‘points’; and book fair fundraising.
Book Club Funding
Book Club is where families receive a catalogue of books supplied from, namely Scholastic, where parents can order from. A percentage of these sales are given to the nominated school in a form of points ($1 = 1 point). Schools can make purchases with these points through the Scholastic website for schools. In our library our Library Assistants manage the book club, promotion, order collation and submission, and distribution of orders. They monitor the orders and identify the popular titles purchased by families. The Librarians then meet with the assistants and ascertain which titles the collection would benefit from. The librarians then order the agreed titles for the library.
Joint Budget
The joint budget for the library provides financial support from both schools the the TL to use at their discretion. Both school TLs have agreed to use a portion of the whole budget for specific needs for their respective schools, while the remainder provides for resources for general use of resources purchased, for both schools. This is not to say that the resources are kept from the other school, it just means the TL will cater some of the collection to specific needs of each school.
The joint budget also funds Australian Standing Orders, where the TLs select and keep resources that will benefit the current collections, or possibly highlight a need for a new collection to be developed.
Any orders made outside Book Club or ASO are researched by the TLs, usually online. The links to these resources are then forwarded to the accounts manager of the government school, who oversees the purchasing for the joint library. This manager then manages the finances for the purchasing and accounting for them when they are delivered.
Book Fair
Book Fair is a fundraising effort which gives the budget some much needed funds at the end of the year. This assists in purchasing supplies, such as covering materials, etc, as well as resources for collections.
While there are policies for purchasing within the both education systems, my situation is fairly unique. I would like to have more freedom for purchasing to ensure that we have a more cost effective process to acquire resources for the collection.
#jointlibraryconsiderations #morebooks #Iloveacquiringbooks