Policies

The Bette E. Landman Library is a three-story building at the heart of the Arcadia campus, located on the edge of Haber Green opposite Grey Towers Castle. Open for over 90 hours a week for individual or group study, classes, the Writing Center, and much more, the Landman Library is your library!  

Access to the Library is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, and available to current University members with their Arcadia University identification card after 5 p.m. on weekdays, and at all hours over the weekend. 

All Arcadia University faculty, staff, and students are issued a Knight card, which is an Arcadia photo identification card identifying them as members of our University community. This card can be obtained at Knight Card Services.  

Please note: no one under the age of 18 will be allowed in the library unless accompanied by a parent or guardian. 

The library building has a variety of seats and spaces, including comfy armchairs, traditional tables and chairs, and computer workstations. 

On the upper level of the library are six study rooms available for groups of current students. The rooms range in capacity from 6 to 8 and contain chairs, a table, a whiteboard, and power outlets. Each room can be reserved for up to three-hour blocks and up to two weeks in advance. The study rooms are for the express use of current Arcadia community members and are not available to visitors.

We welcome Arcadia alumna/i to Landman Library from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m., Monday through Friday!

Alumni can also obtain a library card from the Office of Alumni Engagement in Blankley Hall in order to borrow up to four print books at a time.

Visitors are welcome between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. each day and are welcome to use the open areas of our library. All visitors must check-in at the circulation desk upon entry and must sign in with a government-issued ID. A visitor badge will be issued and must be worn while in the library. Visitors will have access to the use of the print books and periodicals in the library but will not be able to check out books. Visitors also do not have access to interlibrary loan or other research services provided to the campus community.

Visitors will be required to leave the library after 5 p.m. The library is not open to the public on the weekends.

Students from schools who are members of PALCI (Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium, Inc.), TCLC (the Tri-State College Cooperative), and SEPCHE (the Southeastern Pennsylvania Consortium for Higher Education) will be granted access to the building until 5 pm. Access to the print collection will be available on-site but any borrowing must be done through institutional or consortial interlibrary loan. 

For access to the building, students must contact library@arcadia.edu to coordinate their visit with a librarian. 

Checking out library materials is permitted for currently enrolled students, currently employed faculty and staff, and other individuals who may be approved for circulation privileges, such as alumni and campus partners. Consortial partners must use interlibrary loan. 

An active KnightCard is required to check out library items. All Arcadia University faculty, staff, and students are issued an Arcadia photo identification card which identifies them as members of our University community. If you have misplaced or damaged your card it may be obtained at the Office of Public Safety. This office is located in the ground-level area of Dilworth Hall next to Heinz Hall.

Students

• 30-day loan for most books
• No limit on check out amounts

Faculty 

• The loan period for faculty is a semester
• No limit on check out amounts

Staff

• 30-day loan for most books
• No limit on check out amounts

Books may be renewed twice, unless someone else has requested the book. You can renew your item by logging into your account in the library catalog.   

Books2Go is a new book reservation service from Landman! Using our library catalog, patrons can place a request (Hold) for up to ten items per week, and our staff will retrieve the items for you and place them in a bag with your name on and hold it at the Circulation Desk for you. You will receive an email when your items are ready for pickup, and you'll have the items loaned to you for six weeks. 

This service also applies to print interlibrary loan requests, however print ILL remains subject to very limited availability as many other libraries remain closed or are only offering limited lending services. 

The majority of books in the Landman Library are shelved in call number order using the Library of Congress Classification system.   

• The main floor houses the collection from P-Z, all media, and reference.  
• The upper floor houses the collection from A-N and some reference. 
• Board games are located on the main floor, as are the print periodicals.
• The lower level houses the compact stacks and more print periodicals. 

Landman Library aims to maintain a collection that supports students and the university community, balancing a traditional core with a usage-based collection. The intended primary users of the collection are the students currently enrolled in any Arcadia University program. Faculty, administrators, and staff are significant secondary users. We are also committed to promoting and providing access to this collection.

To the degree possible, we aim to abide by the ACRL principle of Equity of Access, which states that “Every student … or any other member of an institution of higher education, is entitled to the library .. resources of that institution” (ACRL, Standards for Distance Learning Library Services, 2008). All materials purchased from library funds will be cataloged and will remain as accessible as possible to the university community. This means that print or other physical materials will be housed in the library, and online materials should have access set up in a way that does not limit usage to a particular department.

The book budget is divided amongst departments and programs. The Collection Development Manager is responsible for making allocations based on a combination of spending history, number of majors in the department/program, and cost of books in the field

Although these funds are used primarily for books, departments that do not use many books have the option of using the funds for journals or database subscriptions. Currently only Glenside-based programs, whether face-to-face or online, receive this allocation, though this may change.

For accounting purposes, we will stop placing orders by March 31 of each fiscal year. Because of the large volume of requests that come in at this time, we ask that faculty submit book requests by this deadline, or earlier if possible, so that we can process them by the ordering deadline. This deadline does not guarantee that the item will arrive and be paid within the current fiscal year, though it is likely to. The Library will not honor any invoice for materials if the order was not placed through the Library.

In general, the library purchases only one copy of any given title. Two copies of books authored by full-time Arcadia University faculty will be added, one in the stacks and the other in Archives. Dissertations or theses of Arcadia University graduates are cataloged and kept in Archives and are also available online.

Considerations when purchasing books are: frequent student paper topics, course offerings, level of degree granted, faculty interest, reputability, strength of current collection on that topic, and the appropriate level and scope of the resource. The library also aims to provide books to support campus activities (e.g., distinguished speakers who will be on campus, plays that will be put on by the Arcadia Theater), books to support university concerns, post-college goals of students, newsworthy books of an academic nature, and literary award winners. The library will also maintain a modest collection of literary fiction for leisure reading as well as a collection of 200-300 popular reading titles.

The Landman Library does not purchase textbooks, either in print or electronic formats. We are not fiscally or administratively set up to buy or manage textbooks at the course level.

Our library faculty are glad to assist professors and departments in identifying textbooks and supplementary materials in all formats for their courses, including materials already held by the Landman Library. Should any Arcadia faculty wish to purchase textbooks or e-textbook access for their classes, they should work with their library liaison, chair, and dean.

We understand that the cost of textbooks can be a factor in student retention and persistence. The Landman Library is a committed partner in efforts to reduce the financial burden of textbook costs, through initiatives such as the use of open educational resources* (OER), inclusive access, use of existing library resources, consortial pricing, and any other effort that will benefit our students. We welcome dialogue on this matter.

E-book content should be selected according to the same criteria of relevance and appropriateness for our students as print books. We try to avoid using multiple e-book aggregators that charge a platform fee or access fee. Currently EBook Central is our primary e-book vendor, and we have access to a large patron-selected collection from this company. We also have ebooks available from EBSCO. Faculty who are interested in purchasing specific books in e-book format can contact us to investigate what vendors might have the book available.

Streaming Films @ Arcadia

Please review the library's guidance on streaming video. 

Serials are added once a year, after renewals are done. All faculty requests are considered for possible new subscriptions. Titles requested 5 or more times in the last year through InterLibrary Loan will be considered as if someone had requested a subscription. Journals are chosen based on predicted usage (past requests on InterLibrary Loan), relevance to new academic programs, price, and their ability to make our collection more well-rounded. A title will be dropped if there is no evidence of its use in the past 2 years.

Faculty may request databases by contacting their liaison librarian, who will gather additional information on the database. The librarian will discuss possible alternatives, start a trial, and solicit feedback on the trial. He or she will then make a recommendation. The librarians will take into account: demonstrated need, significance of the database in the field, gaps in the existing collection, cost, and technical issues pertaining to access.

Database subscriptions are reviewed yearly. The librarians will compare data on usage, cost-per-use, and cost-per-journal for each database and, in consultation with faculty, will cancel subscriptions to the outliers. We will maintain new subscriptions for a minimum of three years before considering cancellation due to low use.

If you are considering donating to the library, we urge you first to contact the Collection Development Manager to speak about the usefulness of a proposed gift. We will incorporate gifts into the collection if they meet our usual collection development goals. Donors of monetary gifts may specify a subject area that they would like to support, provided that this is an area in which we normally collect.

For in-kind donations of research materials, we ask donors to provide a description of the quantity, subject matter, age, and condition of the items that constitute their gift, in order for the library to evaluate the gift. For donations of art, or objects for the archives, donors should describe the items with enough detail that a librarian can make a decision about approving the donation. (Relevant information could include the nature, size, origin, and value of the donation.) Drop-off gifts will not be accepted unless the Collection Development Manager has given prior approval. In some cases a librarian may evaluate the donation in person and select portions of it to bring to the library.

Acceptance of an in-kind donation does not guarantee that all items in it will be added to the library collection. The subject librarian for the relevant department will evaluate books or other materials individually and decide whether they should be added to the collection or discarded. Discarded items will normally be sold in the library’s book sale for a nominal charge.

At a donor’s request, or at the Collection Development Manager’s recommendation, a bookplate will be added to donated books, or books purchased with a monetary donation, indicating the donor’s name. We will not maintain a distinct collection named after a donor; all gift materials that are added to the collection will be shelved in the appropriate location for similar materials.

Should a donor wish to have a gift appraised for tax purposes, such appraisal is the responsibility of the donor. The Collection Development Manager will send a requested letter to the donor acknowledging the gift and noting the number of items in the gift.