This article is for LIBRARIANS


Ebooks that have not yet been bought or licensed for your digital library can be purchased through Engage, using your pre-loaded account balance.


You can decide whether these purchases should be made only by the librarian (including a user with the Finance role), or by anyone using your institution’s digital library (patrons). 


Understanding purchasing types

  • If your purchasing type is set to ‘Librarian purchasing’, users will be able to request that a library book be purchased, and a librarian or a user with the Finance role will be able to approve or deny the transaction in the Finance ‘Requests’ section of Engage.
  • If your purchasing type is set to ‘Patron purchasing’, patrons (i.e. library users) are given permission to add books that they need to your institution’s library collection, without requiring purchase permission. This works best for large institutions where librarian approval for each book is not feasible.

If you've selected 'Patron purchasing' but you haven't loaded an account balance, library users will not be able to check out titles that are not already owned by your institution.

In this case, a library book request will be created for you to review in the Finance ‘Requests’ section of Engage.


Setting your preferred purchasing type

  1. Navigate to 'Settings' when logged in to Engage by clicking the cog icon in the top right-hand corner of your screen.
  2. On the 'General Settings' page, scroll down to ‘Purchasing Type’.
  3. Select ‘Librarian purchasing’ or ‘Patron purchasing’.
  4. Click ‘Save’ at the bottom of the page?


Need help? Contact us at help@snapplify.com or send us a chat message in Engage using the chatbot in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen.