Managing Electronic Theses and Dissertations in Acquisitions

Abstract

In February 2009, the acquisitions librarian for the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), proposed that the Acquisitions Unit take responsibility for digital transfer services for digital collections. The workload of the Acquisitions Unit had been declining, and all indications were that it would continue to decline. Ordering processes had been streamlined and required less staff time, and purchasing of e-book packages and a switch to patron-driven acquisition for e-books suggested that staff time spent on ordering would continue to diminish. An article about transfer-related services suggested a new set of services the unit could provide: • acquiring digital content; • conducting quality review of digital content; • moving digital content between systems; and • inventorying, manipulating, and ingesting digital content into digital collections.