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Traditional contract vehicles do not align well with enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation methodologies. The purpose of this paper is to identify different contract vehicles and how they map to ERP implementation methodologies. Traditional contract vehicles are more process‐oriented than outcome‐focused. Successful standard software implementations are dependent on the outcome. The misalignment of process‐oriented contract vehicles and results‐oriented implementation methodologies leads to many implementation problems with respect to scope creep and ill‐defined interfaces.

The study is based on research from public and private sector contracting documents, interviews and a review of case studies to show that there is a misalignment between contract vehicles, implementation methods and the eventual project plan.

The research concluded that phased or life‐cycle contracting is the best approach when implementing standard (off the shelf) software in an ERP solution. This approach mimics the recognized life‐cycle approach to product/project management where a large project is broken up into several smaller stages.

The data analyzed are from primary and secondary sources such as direct interviews, case study and contract reviews. The primary focus is based on US Federal Agency acquisition and planning policies.

Identifies different contract vehicles and how they map to ERP implementation methodologies.

The purpose of this paper is to mainly find out how well is time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) suits for a university library setting in Estonia. For this purpose, all activities related to acquisitions process were identified and recorded in detail, and the cost of all these activities related to acquisition process in Estonian university libraries based on the example of the TDABC method were anlyzed.

The data used in this paper is based on a review of relevant literature to provide an overview of the concept of the different cost accounting methods suitable for the measurement of the acquisition process. Through a case study, conducted among Estonian university libraries, the TDABC approach was used to analyze the acquisition process in university libraries. More specifically, the acquisition process studied concerned print format books, audiovisual documents and sheet music, and covered acquisition processes such as receipt of orders, ordering documents, communication with bookshop (if necessary), receiving documents and communication with the customer.

On the basis of the current study it can be said the TDABC methodology seems to be one of the best tools for understanding cost behavior and for refining a cost system for university libraries. While analyzing the results, it appeared that the difference in time and cost for acquiring a document can be remarkable and concerns both – acquiring foreign documents (documents from other countries) and acquiring domestic documents, and between the university libraries chosen for the current study.

The subject of cost accounting as a performance measurement method is in general an unexplored field in Estonian university libraries. Time guidelines for acquiring the documents were, however, quite common in the 1980s in the USSR, including Estonia. Soviet-wide regulatory documents were issued on all library work processes, but each library could still implement their own rules. In the 1990s, the regulations were consigned to oblivion. Very few cost surveys involving different library activities have been carried out in Estonia and none have been published. Where such studies have been conducted, the results remain for internal use only.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

OUR correspondents have commented upon the meagreness of the newspaper attention to the Annual Meeting of the Library Association. The opportunities which the affair would seem to afford for press comment are probably exaggerated by librarians, who quite naturally think their matters to be of importance. They are, but they have never been spectacular and are not likely to be so. What the modern pressman wants is a story ; he is not often interested in passive matters nowadays, and more than one editor has admitted that he is not concerned with what people say but with what they do. We may console ourselves to some extent by believing that our quiet work is more enduring than much that is greeted with fanfares. Snippets of facts about high issues of books, parsimony, or believed extravagance, are things that do find their way into the small paragraphs of daily papers. These may be good for our movement but there is no certainty that they are. The only sure advertisement of a library, publicly or otherwise maintained, is the quality of the service it can give.