Chapter 16. Ordering materials

Table of Contents

When should libraries use acquisitions?
Managing Funds
Funding Sources (Required)
Funds (Required)
Fund Tags (Optional)
Ordering
Providers (Required)
Distribution Formulas (Optional)
Helpful acquisitions Library Settings
Preparing for order record loading
Preparing to send electronic orders from Evergreen

Acquisitions allows you to order materials, track the expenditure of your collections funds, track invoices and set up policies for manual claiming. In this chapter, we’re going to be describing how to use the most essential functions of acquisitions in the Evergreen system.

When should libraries use acquisitions?

  • When you want to track spending of your collections budget.
  • When you want to use Evergreen to place orders electronically with your vendors.
  • When you want to import large batches of records to quickly get your on-order titles into the system.

If your library simply wants to add on-order copies to the catalog so that patrons can view and place holds on titles that have not yet arrived, acquisitions may be more than you need. Adding those on-order records via cataloging is a simpler option that works well for this use case.

Below are the basic administrative settings to be configured to get started with acquisitions. At a minimum, a library must configure Funding Sources, Funds, and Providers to use acquisitions.