This is a four-week online course that focuses on the basics of library acquisitions:

- goals and methods of acquiring monographs and serials
- financial management of library collections budgets
- relationships among acquisitions librarians, library booksellers, subscription agents, and publishers.

This course provides a broad overview of the operations involved in acquiring materials after the selection decision is made.
In FOA, we distinguish between collection development, which involves the selection of materials for the library; and acquisitions, which orders, receives, and pays for those materials. In many libraries, selecting and acquiring materials may be done in the same department—in the smallest libraries perhaps even by the same person. In larger libraries, selection may be done by a collection development department and/or designated subject specialists, while a separate department acquires the selected materials. Acquisitions, in essence, is the business side of bringing materials into the library or licensing access to library resources.

Who Should Attend: As a fundamentals course, FOA is tailored for librarians and paraprofessionals new to the acquisitions field, in all types and sizes of libraries. Although many formats and types of materials are discussed, FOA focuses on the acquisition of monographs in a physical format. Although FOA focuses on physical book acquisitions, the structural components of the course—goals and methods of acquisitions, vendor relations, financial management, and ethics—constitute the key components of acquisition and licensing processes for all library materials, in all formats, in all types of libraries.

This course is one-third of the Collection Management Elective course approved by the Library Support Staff Certification Program (LSSCP).

For questions about registration, contact ALA Registration by calling 1-800-545-2433 and press 5 or email registration@ala.org. For all other questions or comments related to web courses, contact Julie Reese, ALCTS Events Manager at 1-800-545-2433, ext. 5034 or alctsce@ala.org.

Posted on behalf of the ALCTS Continuing Education Committee.

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