The Big Picture: A Holistic View of E-book Acquisitions

The merging of two departments into the Acquisitions and Collection Development Department afforded Loyola Marymount University an opportunity to rethink existing workflows, with the acquisition of electronic books (e-books) being identified as a critical task to review. Process mapping was used to show the complexity of different tasks being performed in the department and to provide a visualization mechanism for staff to see how their work fit into a sequence of actions as part of a larger workflow. The authors listed the types of acquisition models used at their library for e-books and constructed process maps for the following six major types: 1. Firm order e-books; 2. Firm order e-book collections; 3. Approval order e-books; 4. Demand-driven e-books; 5. Standing order e-books, and; 6. Subscription e-book database. The authors merged the individual process maps into a single visualization to view the entirety of the acquisition process as a whole and to show how the different e-book acquisition models relate and diverge from one another.