A Lesson Learned the Hard Way, or, The Cost of Relinquishing Acquisitions Control

This paper describes an approach to fund distribution for serials acquisitions that has proven less than satisfactory. A change in collection development policies giving primary responsibility for selection decisions to teaching faculty has resulted in a skewing of the balance in library holdings. The primary reason for the current imbalance is the tendency of academic departments to maintain periodical subscriptions at the expense of monographic publications.