I thought I’d share a tip from Blackwells Collection Manager which may be of interest to Information Librarians. I was working with Kerry this morning to identify titles of interest for Social Work, to help them spend their book money.

In Collection Manager (which you should have a login to, contact me if you don’t), if you go to the Lists menu and select Selection Lists, you can view lists such as the Blackwells Best Sellers, Choice outstanding titles and Choice recommended titles.

If, for example, you choose Choice recommended titles, you can view lists by (broad) subject, e.g. Social and behavioral sciences. You can then click a link at the top to Download Titles, click download once more, save as a txt file, open in Excel (it will be in tab delimited format), and then you can sort by LC number (for example).

Departments/LLOs may find these lists helpful if they are trying to spend their book money at the moment, Social Work is an example of a department who are.

Some departments who have fairly healthy book balances at the moment include:
Fine Arts
Journalism
Linguistics
Social Work
Accountancy (they have heaps!)
Management

We will be encouraging them to spend their money and it would be helpful if you could put in a word likewise if you get the opportunity!

Also I would be keen to receive recommendations for purchase against the General Social Science fund which still has a bit in it.

Also you may be interested to note that recommendations for items using the 2007 expensive acquisitions fund need to be in with Cynthia by Friday 14th September. See the Collection Services blog, Collection Point for more information.

Also, the final date for orders to be processed this year is Friday 19th October. This allows sufficient time for the majority of items to be received by the Library before the budget is closed at the end of December.