Ordering

You have several options for ordering items, depending on your library’s acquisitions workflow and whether orders are emailed, faxed, or transmitted via electronic data interchange (EDI). The basic steps involved in ordering are outlined below.

  1. Select titles and save the bibliographic records in Polaris using one of these methods:

    • Select titles on the supplier’s website - Select the titles on the supplier’s website using the distribution grid set up with your library’s location, collection, and fund information. If your Polaris administrator has added the links, you can go to your suppliers’ websites by selecting Utilities > Link to Supplier Databases.

    • Download the brief MARC records for the selected titles - Save the records to your desktop or another file location.

    • Import the brief MARC records into Polaris - Select Utilities > Importing > Express Import or Full Import and select the Acquisitions Bibs profile, or an import profile named for the supplier. In the import setup, you specify the record set where all the bibliographic records are gathered. For more information, see Setting Up Import Profiles and Importing Records.

  2. Create a purchase order in Polaris using one of the following methods:

    3. Tip:
    For information about the types of orders you can create in Polaris, see Creating Purchase Orders.

    • Bulk add titles to the purchase order - Download bibliographic records from your supplier, import them into record sets, and bulk add titles to the purchase order. The distribution segments are created automatically from 970 tags in the bibliographic records.

    • Create a new blank purchase order - Select File > New from the Polaris Shortcut Bar, and select a template, or create a new, blank purchase order. Add purchase order lines and segments manually. Line items contain information about the titles you are ordering. Each line item contains at least one segment with the distribution and fund information for the copies of that title.

    • Copy an existing purchase order - Save the new purchase order with a different number.

    Tip:
    You can also bulk add titles to a selection list and then copy them to a purchase order.

    • Copy selection list lines to a new or existing purchase order

    • Use Polaris Titles to Go - Query a supplier’s site and bring back title information to create purchase order line items.

    • Renew a subscription in Serials - Purchase orders are created automatically when subscriptions are renewed if the parameter Create Purchase Order at subscription renewal is set to Yes in Polaris Administration. See Renew a subscription from the subscription record.

  3. Release the purchase order, and specify the payment method.
  4. Send the purchase order to the supplier using one of these methods:
    • Fax
    • Email
    • Electronic data interchange (EDI)-The supplier produces an electronic order acknowledgment that is retrieved by the Polaris EDIAgent. You can generate the Electronic PO Acknowledgment report from the EDI acknowledgment files. See Acquisitions Reports..

    Important:
    Your library may have collection development programs where suppliers send many titles of a specific type or genre, but the titles are not known until you receive the order. In these cases, you can create an invoice without a purchase order and give it an order type of Approval Plan or Blanket Order. Your library may refer to these types of orders as standing orders. However, in Polaris, the order type Standing Order is used only with serials. See Creating Purchase Orders.

See also: