Approval vendor selection—what’s best practice?

With the wide variety of vendor services available, discount or other traditional factors may no longer play a predominant role in determining an academic library’s vendor selection. A questionnaire was sent to 291 academic librarians to survey their vendor selection criteria and methods. Using preliminary results from the survey, this paper examines the mix of vendors’ traditional services vs. new services that now enter into the selection decision. Further, it considers differences in practice based upon library budget size. These initial results indicate that the traditional areas of corporate reputation, approval plan management, and acquisitions services consistently receive the highest ratings of importance. The areas covering outsourcing and electronic data transmission are rated higher by those libraries using these services. As more libraries seek these services from their approval vendors, the services will likely increase in importance in librarians’ decision-making processes.