Acquisitions
Outstanding Unit
It is not every year a unit is asked to complete all of its work in one system while learning how to navigate a new and untested system at the same time. It is even more uncommon to do this while many of the key players are working remotely.
Over the past year, the Acquisitions Unit continued ordering, receiving, and paying for materials with change in every area. One nominator noted gratitude that the unit kept up with the number of regular book orders submitted. The number of e-books rose dramatically and required extra COVID coding. The number of books ordered because so many ILL departments were shut down around the country also increased. Receiving could only happen in person but approval processing was handled partially with scans. There were new handoffs to cataloging which allowed more staff members to work remotely.
At the same time, the unit learned about the FOLIO acquisitions app which was not well developed. Our staff patiently worked with EBSCO to understand how the app worked, adapted local workflows, then communicated what was missing. This unit can point with pride to many app improvements which allowed the Libraries to migrate open orders and begin placing orders through FOLIO beginning in early July 2021. Some examples are the ability to export payments to MSU EBS, improvements to how vendor accounts work with the order app, development of expense classes, and the ability to filter more types of information without a create list option. These features will benefit all FOLIO libraries.
Mapping Sierra fields to FOLIO required review of every field in the order record and often resulted in clean up projects to make migration easier. It required soul searching about what information was worth saving and where it needed to reside. Standing orders, some as old as the early 1980’s, were each reviewed before they were cleared for the migration spreadsheet. Fund code creation in FOLIO in preparation for the new fiscal year and the reporting mechanism needed for selectors to review their funds together was meticulously completed.
All of this work culminated in successfully closing one fiscal year in Sierra and opening the next fiscal year in FOLIO just as planned. It was a very challenging year. The Acquisition unit met that challenge and succeeded.
- Lisa Bosman
- Laura Carter
- Hsiang-ping Cha
- Sue Dyer
- Ed Gildner
- Lyudmila Ivanova
- Rita Jenkins
- Beth Nugent
- Lan Oberdick
- Galena Ostipow
- Judy Redding
- Lisa Smith
- Kim Wiljanen