Changes in the Acquisition Process at NTNU University Library

During the last 2-3 years there have been changes implemented in the acquisition processes at the NTNU university library. These changes have been implemented on different levels in the organization and in many areas. Selection of vendors for delivery of information resources is conducted through tenders. The library has currently an agreement with 4 vendors, one for journals, databases and e-books, and 3 for printed books. These vendors give the university library access to large online collections of books and journals, often with high quality metadata. To make the acquisition process more effective, the university library has started to use the institutional procurement system at NTNU for ordering, invoicing and accounting for information resources. Online catalogues offered by our suppliers are integrated into the procurement system (punch out solution). Selection of information resources is done in the vendors catalogue and put into a shopping basket and transferred back to the procurement system. Metadata description is sent from the procurement system to the library system. The library has tested different IT-systems offered by our agent for ordering, administration, storing and access to e-resources. A new discovery tool for searching has been tested and we try to integrate information from the underlying administration system (ERM) into these processes. The aim of the project is to handle procurement both of books and subscriptions within the institutional procurement system, to handle subscription management in the agent system, and to provide access to printed books, e-books, databases and journals using the agent knowledgebase, link server and discovery tool. To achieve better utilization of purchased information resources, especially printed books, new business models for procurement have been tested. The library attempting to move from library controlled acquisition to patron driven selection. Different PDA models for selection of information resources have been tested and implemented