Abstract:

Approval Plans were introduced to China 1980s and used in acquisition of foreignlanguage materials, but this method hasn’t been widely and effectively used in Chinese materials acquisition until now. This paper has reviewed practicing and researching history of approval plans in China, analyzed the difficulties of adopting approval plans, such as low efficiency consciousness of higher authorities, low requirements on utilization rate, low professional level of acquisitioning personnel, lack of related conditions in publishing industry and serious apprentice thinking of library science in China, and raised feasible paths of improving literature acquisition with approval plans in academic libraries in China, such as establishing an effective and practicing collection evaluating mechanism with the goal of higher utilization rate, making a subject profile by bookseller union and library union, deciding core publishing houses and authors of each discipline based on bibliometrics, booksellers supplying subject bibliography, combined bibliography with several conditions and strong information service platform.

Keywords: Academic libraries, Approval plans, Collection development