Dear ARLIS,

I have a question about how you approach acquisition and circulation of limited edition, non-traditional format artists books. At LMU, we do not have a dedicated art library, so when faculty order artists books that aren’t of a traditional format, are typically expensive, and/or are printed in limited edition runs, the only two options we have are to: a) put the book on the shelves in our circulating collection and hope that users will be nice, or b) house the book in archives & special collections.

We do not yet have a dedicated section of our collection development policy for handling these materials, so we tend to deal with them on a case by case basis, contacting the faculty member who requested the book (and often learning that they didn’t realize the odd format or expense of the title they were ordering), and asking them if they prefer that the book resides in our main stacks or in special collections.

Neither of these are optimal solutions, so I am writing to see if there are any libraries out there that have been faced with a similar dilemma, and ask for advice, either as to a specific collection development policy for these materials, or faculty education (so they can understand exactly what it is that they’re ordering), or any other solutions to working with these types of books.

Many thanks!

Jamie Hazlitt

Reference Librarian

Von Der Ahe Library

Loyola Marymount University

310 338 5234