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Acquisitions, ‘Get It For Me’ Make Waves in the Podcast Scene

Thousands of new items appear on Texas A&M University Libraries’ physical and digital shelves each year. Who determines what gets added or finds materials? An episode of a KAMU podcast series has the answers.

Episode 3 of the series “Unsung Talents” highlights important campus jobs you don’t see. Library directors John Ballestro and Lan Yang reveal how their respective departments — Acquisitions and Get It For Me — acquire the titles that help maintain the Libraries’ status as one of the nation’s best.

Ballestro said his acquisitions team purchases roughly 15,000 items each year, half of which are electronic items. He described the Libraries’ strategy of responding to patron requests through a system that results in more usage and a better return on investment for the Libraries, which plans two to five years in advance for acquisitions.

“We are pivoting more towards what’s called patron-driven acquisitions,” Ballestro said. “We have infused our catalog with about 20,000 titles that we haven’t purchased, but patrons can easily take a look at all the information about that title and click the link to say ‘purchase it for me.’”

The Libraries partner with campus mainstays like Barnes and Noble to gather class resource lists that focus on low- to no-costs for students. The expense of e-books versus the space required to house print books is a constant balance in Ballestro’s mind.

Unlimited, free versions of costly e-books fulfill the needs of nearly 80,000 students and over 4,000 faculty at Texas A&M. The Libraries’ focus on limiting costs for students leads to pioneering solutions like allowing classes to view these resources simultaneously.

Texas A&M University Libraries are no stranger to innovation.

In 2002, it was the nation’s first academic library to offer free document delivery and interlibrary service to the entire campus community through Get It For Me, Yang said.

With a simple “you need it, we’ll find it” philosophy, Get It For Me belongs to a global network of over 11,000 libraries spread across over 100 countries and a database of over 2 billion items to process over 4 million loan requests annually.

Aggies rely on the popular service for journal articles that can be delivered in minutes, a book from campus stacks that arrives in a day or two and items from around the world that can be delivered in a few weeks. Scanned PDFs are often available to patrons if items are rare or fragile and can’t safely be shipped. Distance learners benefit from books and documents shipped directly to their homes.

The Libraries are driven to do what it takes to get their patrons what they need.

“The goal is to save our students and faculty money and time,” Yang said. “Providing a convenient service like this encourages our academic community to use our library resources.”