Acquisition of Books and Periodicals

General Description

The acquisitions department includes two sections:

• Book acquisition section - in charge of purchasing books in print as well as e-books;
• Periodicals and electronic database acquisition section - in charge of acquiring periodicals, daily newspapers, and information databases.

The department processes the acquisition requests sent on a monthly basis by coordinators representing their academic units in the faculties of Humanities and the Arts.

Acquisition suggestions by students and patrons are welcome as well, and may be submitted to the department using this online form. The suggestions will be reviewed and brought under consideration based on the library's collection development policies. In addition, lecturers and researchers may make use of the department's services when ordering books for personal use using their own research budgets.

The acquisition process takes place within a set budget, and is based on library policies aimed at developing collections tailored to the diverse requirements of an advanced research institution.

Special emphasis is placed upon acquisition of materials relevant to the fields of study and research currently undertaken at the university.  At the same time, considerable resources are dedicated to the ongoing development and expansion of collections in the field of humanities and the arts as well as interdisciplinary research subjects such as gender studies.

Development of the collections is based on the principles of freedom of information and expression, while subject to the restrictions of copyright law. Most of the materials acquired are in Hebrew or English; acquisition of any material in other languages is based on demand and/or level of importance.

Book Acquisition

The book acquisition department purchases books in print as well as e-books per the following guidelines:

• A single copy of each book in print or single-user e-book
• Additional copies of text books are purchased based on the following criteria:
  • Undergraduate studies - one copy for every 15 students;
  • Graduate studies - one copy for every 10 students.

The maximum number of copies is determined in conjunction with the lecturers.  The textbooks are held at the undergraduate library.

• New or revised editions of books already in existence at the library
• Films in DVD format

Periodicals and Electronic Database Acquisition

The periodicals and electronic database acquisition department is in charge of the following purchases:

• Peer-reviewed periodicals. Precedence is given to maintaining the ongoing subscriptions to periodicals currently part of the library's collection.
• As a rule, periodicals are acquired in electronic format, unless they are  available in print only
• Daily newspapers are acquired either in print or in microform
• Databases of periodicals in electronic format
• Hebrew periodicals in great demand are purchased in two copies
• Databases and other electronic resources