--- apologies for cross-posting ---
“Why don’t you have (more copies of) this book?!” is a typical student
complaint.
This can be tackled in various ways. One way is to approach it as
marketing issue, i.e. student expectations needing to be managed.
Such an approach is not quite the same as the various approaches to
multiple copy provision, which were the object of a previous survey [1] on
this list.
At the University of Warwick Library we would like to know of your
successes, failures and lessons learned in managing student expectations
about library stock levels in your HE institution.
We are interested in the obvious as well as in novel approaches. This is
the kind of idea I anticipate:
- publicising to students your stock ratios and stock management policies
- mentioning them to prospective students, e.g. on the prospectus
- warning students on your website
- making publicly available an explanation of the budget calculations
- redefining your library service – books are nothing to do with us…
- not having this problem since your institution has a different academic
culture
I will summarise for the list. Many thanks for your comments.
Alec
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Alejandro Chiner
Service Innovation Officer
University of Warwick Library Research & Innovation Unit
Gibbet Hill Road, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom
Tel: +(44/0) 24 765 23251 , Fax: +(44/0) 24 765 24211
[log in to unmask] http://www.warwick.ac.uk/go/riu
________________________________________________
[1] A different survey, “Approaches to multiple copies,” was posted by
Gareth Johnson on 7 Jan 2005 to LIS-LINK, LIS-UCR, and
[log in to unmask] A summary of the results, “Follow up: Approaches to
multiple copies,” was posted on 25 January 2005.
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