Book acquisitions policy

Book and serials acquisition is seen as a participatory exercise involving both the staff of the library and academic and researchers of CTIT. Library staff identifies potentially useful new materials and academic/research staff evaluates the usefulness of such material and advice the library on their acquisition.
The overall aim in the book acquisitions program of the library is to see that its collection of books in the core areas is as comprehensive as possible and selective in the peripheral areas and methodologies of interest. Thus the following delineation is provided to broadly guide in the development of the library's collection.
Core subject areas of interest are based on the objectives of the academic and research departments that include the following:

Information Technology to:
- Enable students understand, analyze, and apply the main knowledge areas of Information Technology in real world problem solving.
- Offer advanced education in Information Technology to motivated students who will respond to the future needs of the country in the fast growing area of ICT.
- Respond to the strong demand of the telecom sector, the business, and related sectors for qualified IT specialists,
- Provide the industry with the skilled workforce required for implementing and maintaining various management, information and computer science technologies as well as able to develop innovations in these fields.
- Prepare candidates for research and further studies in Information Technology.

Therefore, the acquisition should focus on books and serials related to ICT skill development, marketing and innovative business management, mobile communication technology, wireless network technology, computer network, network security, software technology, object oriented methods, data management, multimedia systems, internet technology, web based technology, e-commerce, etc.

Telecommunications Engineering to:
- Instill students an enhanced and broad-based understanding of the fundamental engineering principles associated with telecommunications.
- Acquire in-depth knowledge and engineering skills in at least one area of concentration and thereby achieve a competence level necessary to plan, organize and operate plant and equipment deployed for the delivery of telecom services.
- Develop problem-solving skills of analysis, design, modeling and computer simulation.
- Gain an understanding of the management processes in the telecommunication business and delivery of services.
- Acquire skills in the organization and implementation of telecommunications infrastructure projects that would guarantee effective utilization of human and material resources.
- Gain the requisite knowledge that would enable them to keep abreast with the rapid changes in technologies employed in telecommunications.

Therefore, the acquisition should focus on books and serials related to telecom skill development, marketing and innovative business management, project management, operations research, research & development, mobile communication technology, wireless network technology, computer network, network security, networks & protocols, client-server computing, software technology, object oriented methods, data management, data mining, internet technology, web based technology, e-commerce, natural language understanding, natural language processing, machine translation, document summarization/understanding, certification & compliance, desktop & office applications, operating systems, database, programming languages, re-engineering, graphic design & multimedia systems, hardware, IBM technologies, reference materials, etc.

Book purchase procedures

Library staffs search several sources of new book information to identify potentially useful material:

Internet such as amazon.com
Catalogues of commercial publishers and their blurbs
Journals and newsletters of professional bodies and societies
Book review sources
Bibliographies such as Books-in-print
By sending request/suggestion form to lecturers
Personal visit to local book suppliers

Information on new books that are of potential interest is brought to the notice of researchers and academic staff. As much information about new books as possible is made available so that they can make good judgments about the value and usefulness of the publications. The Head Librarian then approves publications recommended by specialists for purchase. The acquisition personnel then takes purchase action. The head librarian is authorized to purchase books which are useful to more than one department such as reference materials and journals which have been already been identified as being useful.
Once a book is approved for purchase, the acquisitions librarian places a purchase order with the most appropriate vendor in Addis Ababa. In special cases, orders may be placed directly with vendors or publishers in Addis Ababa or abroad. However, the library follows a long procedure before placing a purchase order.

Exchange procedures

Gift of books

While the Graduate School Library encourages the donation of gift materials and funds designated for the enhancement of its collections, it reserves the right to refuse, discard, or weed materials which do not meet its collection priorities and selection criteria or whose poor physical condition prohibits their addition to the Library's collections. The Library will provide the donor with a list of items received.

Serials acquisitions procedures

As is the case for other library material acquisitions, serials should be selected to support the teaching requirements of the Graduate School and to assist the research activities of the academic staff and students.

The definition of a serial as stated in the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rule 2nd edition is "a publication in any medium issued in successive parts bearing numerical or chronological designations and intended to be continued indefinitely". Serials include: periodicals, newspapers, annual reports, yearbooks, journals, memoirs, proceedings, transactions, etc., of societies. Thus, the guidelines and process for the selection, review, cancellation and ordering of serial titles is different from other library materials.

The same procedure will be followed to purchase serials. However, the process will not end when the first issue is acquired. Checking is done for successive issues according the serial's frequency. The frequency of the serial can be weekly, fortnightly, monthly, bimonthly, annually, etc. The librarian should reclaim for missing issues. If the first and third issues of a weekly journal arrive, the librarian should reclaim for the second issue. The librarian should check and reclaim if the issue discontinue more than the reasonable date of acquisition. The librarian has also to make sure all payments are effective before the serial's expiration date.
When selecting new serial titles, consideration should be given to the reputation of the issuing organization, the language of the serial, the availability of indexing, and the cost of the serial.