The Geosciences In Approval Plans: A Comparative Review

Over the years there has been occasional discussion about approval plans. For the most part, the discussions concerning approval plans for geoscience materials have been favorable, but they are all based on various librarians' experiences rather than a detailed comparison of what each approval vendor offers. Librarians who work with geoscience materials are aware of some approval plan weaknesses, especially when it comes to the small press and regional publications such as field trip guidebooks frequently used by geoscientists. In addition, most major approval plan vendors do not deal with maps, and probably have never heard about geospatial data. Since the longest discussion on Geonet in the mid-1990s, there have been many changes in approval plans. Academic Book Center merged with BNA, leaving us with two major vendors for our approval plans (Blackwell and Yankee). In addition, we now have the opportunity to select both print and electronic materials

A detailed comparison of the materials profiled by two major geoscience approval plan vendors provides some interesting results and answers a number of questions: Which vendor profiles more titles (print and electronic) in the geosciences? What is the level of coverage (scholarly or general)? What publishers are covered by the vendors? Do both vendors treat the materials about the same time, or is there a lag between the time an item is published and the time that it is treated by the vendor? The results of this comparison could be useful when choosing an approval vendor for geoscience materials.