The document discusses the acquisitions evaluation process at Stetson University College of Law libraries. It describes budget cuts and increased pressure to consolidate roles. The libraries have two campuses, approximately 1000 law students, and a staff that includes six dual degree librarians. The libraries hold weekly meetings where all librarians evaluate new titles and make decisions on keeping or cancelling items. They track decisions in their library system and a shared Excel spreadsheet. The process involves receiving new items, analyzing them in meetings, recording decisions, and adding approved items to the collection or returning cancelled ones. Lessons learned include benefits of a proactive budget approach and greater collaboration between librarians through their joint evaluation work.

1. Ashley Krenelka Chase and Elizabeth Barnes

2. The Lay of the Land
• Law Schools Are Still Very Print Centric
• Budget cuts are profound
• There is an increased pressure to combine library support
roles and increase the technical expertise of support staff
• The pressure (and desire) to provide excellent resources
and customer service to our patrons has not decreased.

3. Stetson University College of Law
• 2 Campuses in the Tampa Bay, Florida area
• Florida’s first law school
• Approximately 1000 law students
• 50 Full time faculty members
• 6 dual degree (JD/MLS) librarians, 2 part-time MLS
librarians, 2 full-time MLS librarians, 11 paraprofessional
staff members, and student assistants.

4. Library Organizational Chart

5. Evaluations at Stetson – The Basics
• Evaluations are incorporated into weekly librarians’
meetings.
• Every week we evaluate titles.
• All of the librarians are involved in decision making.
• All of the staff are involved in the
evaluations process.
• We keep track of our keeps and
cancels in our Library Management
System and in an Excel spreadsheet.

6. Workflow Overview

7. Workflow Details
Materials Arrive
Materials arrive to be evaluated – can be a physical item, an
invoice, an electronic tickler or a request for us to purchase
something. If an item has not been evaluated within the last
6 months it comes to the Librarian’s meeting for analysis.
Analysis
We discuss each item that has come in that week at our
weekly librarian’s meeting. The things that we look at for
each item are: cost, amount of use, and their importance
to the collection and the field.
Decision is
Recorded
Once a decision is made, the items are sent to our access
management team to be processed. The decision is
recorded in our library management system as well as in
an Excel spreadsheet.
Materials are
added into the
collection or
returned to the
vendor
After the decision is made and recorded items
are either processed into the collection or
cancelled with the vendor and returned.

8. “The Spreadsheet”

9. Lessons Learned
• Taking a proactive approach to budget cuts is empowering.
• It is easier to get people to talk about acquisitions for 15
minutes a week than for even an hour a month.
• By bringing together questions of material use and budget the
pure reference librarians and the technical services librarians are
having greater understanding of each other’s jobs.
• Having a successful project that the whole library works on has
paved the w ay for unity and buy in on other projects.
• Our faculty and students have a greater respect for and
understanding of our work because we have involved them in
the acquisitions process as well.
• Sometimes the best path is to just keep moving forward even if
everything isn’t perfect.

10. Questions?
More Information?
Ashley Krenelka Chase
Library Administrator
Stetson University College of Law
1401 61st Street South
Gulfport, FL 33707
akrenelk@law.stetson.edu
Elizabeth C. Barnes
Library Administrator
Stetson University College of Law
1401 61st Street South
Gulfport, FL 33707
barnes@law.stetson.edu