Acquiring an acquisitions module: Croydon Libraries’ solution

Although Croydon Libraries have been operating automated stock circulation and cataloguing procedures for some years, they took a management decision to delay automating stock acquisitions. Solutions offered during the 1980s failed to meet requirements in terms of stock control, electronic trading and cost benefits. Information technology (IT) innovations around manual acquisitions procedures enabled them achieve a high level of performance. By mid‐1995 it was thought that technological advances had made automation a viable option, and the demise of the Net Book Agreement (NBA) highlighted the cost‐benefits of electronic trading. The solution would be built around a bibliographic datafile (potential requirements datafile – PRD) with the acquisitions module seen as a station within an electronic trading network. It would have to replicate Croydon’s sophisticated clerical and accountancy systems, demonstrate cost benefits and have development potential and would need to be “stand‐alone”.