Page 172 - DLIS003_LIBRARY ADMINISTRATION AND MANAGEMENT

Unit 9: Acquisition Section

case of books donated, they are assigned a Donation Number in addition to the Accession Notes
Number. When loose issues of periodicals are bound into a volume, they are given accession
numbers. While in some organizations the accession numbers are given to documents after
technical processing, in others, it is done first. Once an accession number is assigned, it is
deemed to be the property of the library.

9.4.1 Planning

Many consider that accessioning is a mechanical process and easy to perform. On the contrary,
it requires much experience and judgement. Some of the factors that make accessioning of
documents difficult pertain to:
(i) Definition of “Volume”: Economy in the cost of binding. reduction in the number of
undersized volumes difficult to handle, the need for splitting over thick and composite
books that may admit of such treatment and several other considerations stand in the way
of counting every volume that arrives in the library as a separate book for accessioning
solely on the basis that they were stitched or cased and issued separately by the publisher.
Hence, one requires a good deal of judgement in deciding what constitutes a volume for
the purpose of assigning a single accession number.
(ii) Periodical Publications: Periodical publications present a series of complications like
different sequences of pagination and the existence of more than one title page in the same
volume. In such situations, the question arises as to whether the volume should be separate
as per the title pages and each part accessioned and bound separately.

9.4.2 Factors in Planning

The books are received into the library by four distinct streams or paths:
(i) Documents acquired by the Book Order Section

(ii) Documents acquired by the Periodical Section
(iii) Documents received as Unsolicited Gifts
(iv) Documents received on Exchange.
Therefore, the distinctive work of the Accession Section is to be planned with reference to the
following factors:
(a) Ordered books;
(b) Accession; and
(c) Unsolicited Gift books.

9.4.3 Accession Register

The basic question involved in accessioning work is the choice of the Accession Register. The
Accession Register is the basic record in the library about each document forming part of its
collection. The general practice in libraries is to have a single register in which all types of
documents whether purchased or received as gift or on exchange or as deposit are entered. But
some libraries have the practice of using separate accession registers for gifts and for deposited
items still another practice is to have the accession list in card form. In this case, the card used at
the stage of book selection will be converted into the accession card and filed in the accession
number sequence and kept under safe custody.

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