The departmental allocation

The library allocates a certain amount of money annually to each department and program to recommend books and other purchases. One member of each department collects these recommendations and forwards them to the librarian working with your department. How you choose to handle that allocation is a departmental matter. Some like to allocate a fixed amount to each faculty member. Others simply place orders as requests are made. It's your choice. Just be aware that what you request should be suitable for an undergraduate readership. See our Collection Development Policy for more details.

Books in other areas

You may want to recommend books to the library that aren't specific to your departmental program. Please feel free to pass such recommendations along to the library. We want to build interdisciplinary areas as well.

Videos and DVDs

Departments have some funding from the Dean for purchasing videos and DVDs. We encourage you to order those through the library and allow us to catalog them so they can be a campus-wide resource. (We also often get volume discounts.) If your departments funds don't stretch to cover all the videos you need, you may choose to use some of your allocation to buy videos. Though the default check-out period for videos and DVDs is 5 days for faculty, we can override that and check them out for a longer period if that's more convenient for your program.

Subscriptions to journals and electronic databases

Journals and databases, both ongoing subscriptions, aren't purchased out of these allocations and decisions about additions are taken up by the librarians. We consider database requests individually as they arise. Generally, we consider journal requests annually as a group. Journal prices tend to rise at a higher annual rate than books and we are cautious about making additions. We try to evaluate our total journal collection every three years.

Special funds

In addition to funds allocated to the department, the library has funding available to fill in gaps. You may want to recommend books to the library that aren't specific to your departmental program. Please feel free to pass such recommendations along to the library. Though we aim to support the curriculum, we want to build a solid undergraduate collection that covers areas not necessarily specific to our course offerings.

We also have several endowed lines that have a subject focus. We appreciate your help in making use of these funds.

• Alexis - American Studies
  
• Ebba Carlson - for cutting-edge materials in the field of biology
  
• Edgar M. Carlson - Religion; Lutheran studies in particular
  
• Drache -Western European History
  
• GLA Diversity - for purchasing materials related to diversity widely-defined
  
• Moe - originally established for purchasing a set of the Minnesota Statutes; additional funding is used for legal materials generally as they relate to our mission and curriculum
  
• Women's Studies (also referred to as SURDNA) - for women's and gender studies materials; this should not be interpreted as anything vaguely related to women. Although it may well supplement a department's allocation, it shouldn't be counted on for every book that relates in some way to women or feminist approaches.
  
• Scandinavian Studies - to support the Scandinavian Studies curriculum.