Tendering for Periodicals Supply: Experiences from the United Medical and Dental School

The United Medical and Dental School is a single faculty school of the University of London. In student terms it is the largest medical school in the United Kingdom with 1500 undergraduate and 300 postgraduate students. The Library Services have a periodicals budget, in 1994, of £230,000). The library takes c.900 subscriptions and runs two medical libraries and two specialist dental and dermatology libraries. This paper will deal primarily with the financial aspects of the tendering process, looking at why the library went to tender, the contents of the tender specification, the outcomes of the tender and some general conclusions.Reprinted from the Conference Proceedings published by Kluwer Academic Publishers (in press) with permission.