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Acquisitions COI

Community of Interest

Acquisitions Standards & Procedures

The OPAL Acquisitions Committee has assembled the following policies in an attempt to provide a standard format for acquisitions functions.

  1. If the full bibliographic record is not already in OPAL, a brief bibliographic record for the item is acceptable. A full OCLC record is not necessary at this time, since it is difficult to choose the appropriate record without the item in hand.
  2. If the full bibliographic record is already in OPAL, before attaching an order record or check-in record, verify that there is an EXACT item match. An EXACT match is one where the author, title, ISBN, and publisher and date are the same. If the item being ordered is the paperback edition, and the bibliographic record only has the ISBN for the cloth edition, create a new brief bibliographic record.
  3. Whenever possible, a brief bibliographic record needs to contain the title, the ISBN, the author, the publisher and the publication date. Any additional information to aid in proper identification, such as a series title, is acceptable. The format for the brief bibliographic record needs to follow OCLC format as much as possible. Here are some guidelines:
    • BOOKS
      • TITLE: only the first word and proper names are capitalized
      • Title with no subtitle:[main title] [period]
        • Example: The philosophy of language.
      • Title with subtitle:[main title] [space] [colon] [space] [subtitle] [period]
        • Example: Florence Nightingale : mystic, visionary, healer.
      • ISBN: omit all dashes
        • Example: 0198752504
      • AUTHOR: last name first
      • Name with no middle initial/name:[last name] [comma] [first name] [period]
        • Example: Ardagh, Philip.
      • Name with middle initial/name:[last name] [comma] [first name] [middle initial/name] [period]
        • Example: Clarke, Mary Cowden.
      • PUBLISHER & DATE: [publisher] [comma] [year published] [period]
        • Example: Columbia University Press, 1998.
    • MEDIA
    • TITLE: only the first word and proper names are capitalized
    • Title with no subtitle:[main title] [period]
      • Example: Dancing.
    • Title with subtitle:[main title] [space] [colon] [space] [subtitle] [period]
      • Example: In country : folk songs of Americans in the Vietnam War.
    • ISBN: omit all dashes (if unavailable, leave blank)
      • Example: 0783231687
    • PUBLISHER & DATE:[publisher] [comma] [year published] [period]
      • Example: Bureau of National Affairs, 1998.
  4. Libraries are encouraged to use the order bib templates available in OPAL as a guide for following proper format.
  5. If an error or oversight is found in another library’s brief bibliographic record, correct the problem only if you are absolutely certain that you are correcting an error and not changing the original intent of the record. If there is any uncertainty, contact the library and allow them to review and perhaps correct the situation.
  6. When the material arrives, the brief bibliographic record must be overlaid with a full bibliographic record, or the order record must be transferred to a full bibliographic record.