Material Notifications Reporting Terminology

Material Notification Reporting Terminology

Material notifications are flagged by the Akademos by VitalSource Procurement team as they confirm inventory with publishers or place course materials orders for the upcoming academic term. As this team manages the physical inventory of the materials adopted for your institution, these flags are used to indicate potential issues related specifically to the physical availability of adopted materials.

To note, while an adoption may be flagged by a publisher with a particular material notification (see below), it is always possible that we may have either enough physical inventory to cover enrolled students or that the item can be fulfilled digitally. As the Adoptions Team reviews your material notifications, some flagged materials will begin to fall off this report. That said, if an item appears on this report, there could be issues fulfilling student orders for the material by the first day of class.

• Program Type
  • There are 2 options on the report - SC and EA
    • SC (Student Choice) - A course material that is adopted at an institution and students elect to purchase from the virtual Bookstore website
    • EA (Equitable Access) - A course materials that is adopted at an institution where all print and/or digital course material model are delivered to students prior to the first day of class and all students pay the same price
• Bookstore Open Date
  • Date that your Virtual bookstore opens to students for purchasing
    • Once purchasing opens to students, if course materials are switched refunds cannot be guaranteed for materials no longer adopted
• Course Start Date
  • Date reported of the specific course start
    • This can be different from the actual term start date
• Material Notification Type
  • There are 4 material notification flags that are used in the bookstore system – New Edition, Out of Print, Backorder, Reprint
    • New Edition – The publisher/vendor has informed the Procurement team that a new edition is available and orders for the old edition potentially might not be fulfilled
    • Out of Print – The publisher/vendor has informed the Procurement team that the item is no longer supported/printed, and we may not be able obtain additional physical inventory
    • Backorder – The publisher/vendor has informed the Procurement team that the item is not available when they attempted to place the order. We will obtain an estimated in stock date and our order can be expected to be fulfilled by the publisher/vendor at that point
      • To note, the date listed is not when the inventory will be shipped out to students
    • Reprint – The publisher/vendor has informed our Procurement team that the item is available under a different ISBN (examples listed below)
      • Hardcover no longer printed, but paperback is available
      • An item is no longer printed but may be available digitally
      • A bundle is no longer offered, but the individual components that made up the bundle are
• New ISBN
  • ISBN recommended by Procurement team to swap adoption to
    • This is provided by the publishers & vendors when our team checks the availability of materials
• Amt Action
  • Two different options – Active & Pending
    • Active – Item is adopted and has a problem flag associated with it, but has not yet had outreach to the faculty/adopter from the Bookstore team nor escalated to the Adoptions Enablement team
    • Pending – Item is adopted and has a problem flag associated with it, outreach and/or escalation has occurred for this item
• Amt Notes
  • If an item is “Pending”, the notes detailing the outreach by the Bookstore team will be documented here. Unless otherwise stated, the Adoptions Enablement team is reaching out to the assigned faculty for that course
• Physical Only
  • The adopted item has a limitation set to only show print options. If an eBook is available for the title, it will not be visible for students to purchase
    • If an item is on the report with this designation set, the faculty may need to allow eBooks in order to have a purchasable item for students
• Ebook Available
  • This column indicates if an eBook is potentially available for the adopted course material
    • If you have worked with a publishing rep to get school specific rights to an eBook, this column is not able to determine that

If you believe an adoption has an eBook available for your specific school but would like to check, please reach out to ✉️ adoptions@vitalsource.com