To meet scholars’ individual research needs, CRL purchases materials in the following areas for CRL libraries on request:

• Doctoral Dissertations from institutions in countries outside of the U.S. and Canada
• Newspapers for which CRL owns at least one day of a newspaper title
• Archival material from national governments, NGOs, and other organizations and institutions

Request a Demand Purchase

Requests for demand purchases are initiated by member ILL offices via the interlibrary loan request for the item. As funds permit, requests are honored on a first-come, first-served basis with a maximum expenditure of $2,000 per patron per year. This maximum includes purchases from all three categories of the Demand Purchase Program. Please note that CRL may decline to purchase materials when the requested material is readily available from one or more CRL libraries.

In recent years, the demand purchase program has acquired such items as:

• Historical photographs of the Middle East
• Military Uses of Space 1946–91
• Missing years from Arab American newspaper Huda
• Doctoral dissertations on turfgrass
• A collection of dissertations on Netherlands Indies Law, 1850–1945

Occasionally CRL may be unable to purchase an item because of circumstances beyond its control. In some instances, for example, materials are available only at unreasonably high prices set by publishers or vendors. Certain dissertations, moreover, are not available for circulation because of restrictions imposed by an author or a university.

For more information about the Demand Purchase Program, please contact Access Initiatives.