British Approval Plan Books: American or British Vendor?

A number of factors contribute to the need for collection developers to reexamine the use of British dealers for British books: fluctuations in the value of the American dollar, the absence of discounts from British dealers, the highly competitive nature of discounting among American dealers, the increased availability of British titles distributed or simultaneously published on this side of the Atlantic, timeliness of materials, and the differences in technical processing introduced by both avenues of acquisition. This case study describes actions taken over a two‐year period (mid 1983 to November 1985) at a medium‐sized research library to reexamine these issues.