Acquisitions of Hard-to-Find Backfiles of Chinese Periodicals from the People’s Republic of China

Abstract

This paper describes the University of Iowa Libraries’ experience in purchasing hard-to-find backfiles of Chinese periodicals from China. It sheds light on how small foreign-language collections in North America can be greatly enhanced by using a novel acquisition strategy and by understanding the different book market conditions in third-world countries. The experience summarized here is unique in some aspects and can be used by other libraries in similar cooperative projects in the future.