International information update Acquiring international documents: challenges, strategies, sources Chuck Eckman* ,1 Social Sciences Resource Center, Green Library, Room 123A, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6004, USA Received 20 November 2000; received in revised form 22 December 2000; accepted 27 January 2001 Acquiring international government information is an increasingly challenging area of librarianship, both, in terms of the sheer number of publishing entities and the multiplicity of formats. While recent years, have seen a trend toward concentration of commercial publishing entities, the trend in the international governmental arena is the exact opposite. When the Union of International Associations (UIA) first began tracking the growth of all types of international bodies in 1909, it identified 37 organizations as international governmental organizations (IGOs). The 2000/2001 edition of the UIA Yearbook identifies 6556 active IGOs (Union of International Associations, 2000/2001). The shift from print to electronic publishing media has created new challenges. For the past 30 years, many of the IGOs produced statistical data on magnetic tape for scholarly research and commercial use; within the past 5–10 years IGOs have migrated distribution of this type of data to diskette and CD-ROM. Unfortunately, there has been little standardization of data and software formats associated with these IGO products, and that situation has proven to be a significant challenge for international document specialists. Developing a collection that supports a particular clientele’s need for international governmental information requires an acquisition strategy that is grounded in a local needs assessment, informed by an awareness of publishing trends, and achieves as diverse a balance as possible between the four basic modes of document acquisition: gift, depository, direct, and vendor-based. 1352-0237/01/$ – see front matter D 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII:S1352-0237(01)00277-5 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-650-723-2982; fax: +1-510-643-6650. E-mail address: ceckman@stanford.edu (C. Eckman). 1 Guest editor. Journal of Government Information 28 (2001) 179 – 183