Acquisition of Databases, Books and Journals

Acquisition budget

The library’s acquisition budget is made up of allocations from the Ministry of Education and Research and the university. The library divides the allocated amount:

• for purchasing databases;
• purchasing scholarly monographs and scholarly journals on the recommendations of the faculties; 
• for purchasing textbooks and other Estonian publication;
• for purchasing reference works, etc.

The amount allocated for a faculty’s acquisition recommendations corresponds to the faculty’s contribution to the university budget. This principle has been approved by the Budget Committee of the university. The subject librarian will inform the school of the exact amount for which institutes of different faculties can recommend purchasing foreign language books, journals and other materials supporting research and teaching during the year.

The books and journals recommended by the faculties will be catalogued and made available in the UT library through the e-catalogue ESTER, but they can also be deposited in the subject libraries (director’s directive 22.09.2022 4-1.6/RT/8). Handbooks, manuals, etc., which are needed in the schools on site, are better purchased with the school’s own money. These do not need to be registered in the e-catalogue. It would be reasonable to purchase narrowly specialised scholarly monographs with grant money; however, books and other purchased publications must be registered in the e-catalogue (according to the director’s directive 8.11.2019 4-1.6/RT/15, Addendum 2).

The subject librarian monitors the use of the money allocated for faculty recommendations and is responsible for adhering to the allocated amount.

Purchasing Access to Databases and e-Journal Packages

Access to databases and publishers’ e-journal packages is purchased both with the resources allocated for the ELNET Consortium and from the library’s own resources. In any case, it is more practical to do it centrally through the library. 

If you wish to subscribe to a new database, please notify the subject librarian. Before buying access to a database, there is usually a test run for the database. The schools will be informed of test runs by the subject librarians. The statistics and feedback of the test period are important parameters for deciding whether to purchase access to the database. The process of acquisition can be quite lengthy due to price negotiations or procurement procedures.

Subscribing to Journals

Subscriptions to journals can generally be submitted once a year, usually due by 15 September. The subscription period of journals is 1 January to 31 December. As a rule, the publishers only accept annual subscriptions (for e-journals as well). When subscribing, it is important to indicate whether you wish for a hard copy or online version of the journal. As the price of scholarly journals increases 4-5% per year on average and journal subscriptions are a long-term burden on the book acquisition budget, the necessity of subscribing to a journal should be seriously considered. In some cases, it might be more practical to use the interlibrary loans (ILL) service. 

The library is subject to the institutional price when buying journals, and the price of an e-journal is usually determined by the size of either the university membership (FTE) or the school. The library buys journals from several large publishers as packages (e.g., Springer, Cambridge UP, Wiley, Oxford UP, Sage, etc.). Constant changes on the publishing market bring with them a constantly changing list of e-journals. You can check the e-journals available to the University of Tartu here. 

Ordering Books

To order books, please send your requests to the subject librarian. Be sure to include the author, title and year of publication and, if possible, the publisher and ISBN. The library will find the most favourable way of acquisition using both domestic and foreign bookshops and intermediators. During the ordering process, quotes will be obtained from several intermediators. Long-term cooperative relationships ensure discounts for the library. Larger quantity orders are discounted as well (usually starting from 10 copies).