Vassar College Libraries

Home / Collection Management Resource / Approval Plans

An approval plan is an arrangement whereby a bookseller (using a pre-determined set of parameters known as a profile) automatically ships books to a library for on-site review and/or provides title announcements (notification slips) sent in lieu of books. Books sent on approval may then be kept for the collection or returned to the bookseller. Judicious use of approval plans can be a valuable asset to a collection development program. With careful profiling and review of materials, approval plans have proven to be especially useful for building core collections, as well as for ensuring collection breadth. Their chief virtues are:

• they help compensate for unevenness brought about when individual selectors haven't the time to attend to reviewing the publishing output of their fields
• they provide for collection in areas where selectors are absent or on leave
• they alleviate some of the workload involved in reviewing tens of thousands of items annually for possible addition to the collection
• they allow selectors to make individual acquisitions decisions with materials-in-hand
• they underwrite the development of objectives and profiles for a programmatic approach to selection
• they promote a connection between title-by-title and programmatic decision-making in the profile review process
• they allow for purchase of material at quantity discounts
• they are useful for projecting costs.

For approval plans to work well, however, incoming materials have to be carefully reviewed, and profiles need to be routinely and systematically assessed through review of returns lists, post-profiling materials received in other ways, and through periodic comparison of past receipts with lists of materials that would or should have been ordered were no plan in place.

The Vassar Libraries maintain a variety of approval plans. Individual department and program plans are administered by librarian liaisons.

For more information on Vassar’s approval plans, please contact Debra Bucher, (845) 437-5763.