Librarian Liaisons A librarian is assigned to each academic department (see the list of liaisons). These librarian liaisons are charged to keep up with the literature of their subject disciplines, and to understand the curriculum of their departments, how it is taught and what research is being conducted. They actively solicit input from teaching faculty on what books, videos, journals, and so on will be useful for the university’s work. They also choose materials that they know will be useful in strengthening our collections, apart from immediate curriculum use. These librarians are responsible for the collections in their subject areas, and their only constraint is to stay within their budget allocations. See the current allocation plan. The Collection Development Team The librarian liaisons are all part of the library’s Collection Development Team. The Team meets each month to discuss a variety of issues relating to the selection and use of materials. One of the Team’s important ongoing tasks is to engage in a continual review of the library’s selection of interdisciplinary journal and related subscription items, and, in particular, the selection of electronic databases and electronic journal packages. The Team’s goal is for the library to have subscriptions to important databases covering every curriculum area. The major constraints are what is available for purchase in each field (not every subject area has a useful database dedicated to that topic) and, inevitably, cost. See Subscription databases: costs and usage for FY 2007 for a list of current database subscriptions and their annual cost. Faculty Input The librarian liaisons welcome input from faculty on what materials are useful for the collections. Faculty can contact their liaisons directly with their suggestions or they can use the Recommendation for purchase form Students, too, often suggest titles for purchase and, whenever we can, we are happy to accept their recommendations.

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