Acquisition / Periodicals Administration

The Acquisition group experienced an increase in workload in 2012. This increase can be partially explained by a shift from printed books to e-books. This means more work per order, but also an increase in the number of orders. The workload also increased as a result of long-term sick leave and secondment, which could only be partially compensated.

Furthermore, all ongoing projects took up quite some time and the departure of Willy Palmen meant that several of his tasks had to be taken over by someone else, including the General Literature Budget and the European tender of printed books.

In September, Edzes’ announcement that they were closing down as of 1 January 2013 caused quite a stir. Alongside the mainly emotional fact that our oldest supplier was stopping, this brought a great deal of extra work for the Acquisition group and the Periodicals Administration. Ongoing orders on monographs had to be checked and often placed with other suppliers. Subscriptions purchased through Edzes had to be cancelled and purchased anew somewhere else. As this was a perfect opportunity to check the periodicals for relevance to the collection, this was done straight away. This ultimately led to the cancellation of approximately 300 periodicals, thus saving a considerable sum of money.