Questions? Call 888-624-8373

PAPERBACK + PDF
your price: $41.00
add to cart

PAPERBACK
list:$35.00
Web:$31.50
add to cart

PDF BOOK
your price: $27.00
add to cart

PDF CHAPTERS
your price: $2.80
select

Rights & Permissions

topleft topright

LC21: A Digital Strategy for the Library of Congress (2000)
Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications (CPSMA)
 Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB)

Page
84
bottomleft bottomright
  E-mail
 Facebook
 Digg
 Stumble
 Twitter
More

The following HTML text is provided to enhance online readability. Many aspects of typography translate only awkwardly to HTML. Please use the page image as the authoritative form to ensure accuracy.

LC 21: A Digital Strategy for the Library of Congress

BOX 3.1
The Acquisitions Directorate at the Library of Congress

The Library of Congress (LC) acquires materials in all formats, languages, and subjects (except technical agriculture and clinical medicine) from all over the world, under the guidance of LC’s collection policy statements.1 On average, 22,000 items are received by the Library every working day; of these, approximately 7,000 items are selected for the permanent collections.2

The Acquisitions Directorate is organized into a fiscal office and four divisions—the African/Asian Acquisitions and Overseas Operations Division,3 the Anglo/ American Acquisitions Division, the European/Latin American Acquisitions Division, and the Serial Record Division. There are about 300 employees in the Acquisitions Directorate in the Washington, D.C., area and 300 staff members based abroad.

1  

See <http://www.lcweb.loc.gov/acq/> for information about the Library’s collection policy statements and other aspects of the Acquisitions Directorate.

2  

These data are based on a presentation made at a site visit to the Library in July 1999.

3  

The Library operates offices in New Delhi, Cairo, Rio de Janeiro, Jakarta, Nairobi, and Islamabad to acquire, catalog, preserve, and distribute materials in regions where conventional acquisitions methods are not effective. In addition to serving LC, these offices conduct cooperative acquisitions programs on behalf of 105 participating institutions, primarily academic research libraries.

unpublished materials) are selected for the permanent collections.5 The remaining items are earmarked for exchange or disposal;

  • Demanding copies of selected works published in the United States from publishers who failed to submit the copies, as per the mandatory deposit requirement;

  • Selecting from works submitted for the Cataloging in Publication (CIP) program. The CIP program serves the nation’s libraries by cataloging books in advance of publication, using page proofs. It requires that publishers submit a copy of the published book to LC;6

  • Purchasing materials that add to the depth and breadth of LC collections. The Library has an acquisitions budget of approximately $10 million per year, much of which goes for purchases abroad;7

5  

The Copyright Office retains unpublished work that it receives off-site for 70 years after the death of the author, but such materials are not cataloged or integrated into the Library’s collections.

6  

For additional information about the CIP program, see <http://lcweb3.loc.gov/cip/>.

7  

As reported to the committee during a site visit to the Library in July 1999. In 1999, the median acquisitions budget for members of the Association for Research Libraries was $6.3 million (see <http://www.arl.org/stats/arlstat/1999t4.html>). The Library estimates the annual value of copyright deposits selected for the collections at $23 million, and its direct purchases amount to $10 million, for a total of $33 million in acquisitions for the Library.
Page
84