An assessment of e-book collection development practices among Romance language librarians

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to describe the collection development practices regarding e-books among librarians who manage French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish (Romance) materials. The authors aim to describe factors that influence acquisition of e-books for Romance language collections to confirm librarians’ perception that humanities researchers prefer print and library administrators’ attitudes toward e-books.

Design/methodology/approach

This study collected data using a mixed-method approach of a survey and focus groups.

Findings

This study confirms that user preference is the primary consideration of Romance librarians in selecting e-books. Contrary to librarians’ perceptions, this study found that humanities faculty and students are not averse to using e-books for specific purposes such as searching, targeted reading and course materials. While restrictions on lending e-books are a concern, Romance librarians are focused primarily on serving the needs of their core constituencies.

Research limitations/implications

The practice of adding call numbers to individual e-books varies among institutions. Individual e-book titles in large packages do not necessarily get added to the catalog, thus making it very difficult to compare e-book collections between institutions.

Originality/value

This study endeavors to unify the anecdotal narratives and factors that influence the acquisition of e-books by Romance librarians.

Citation

Reyes, B.M. and Devlin, F.A. (2021), "An assessment of e-book collection development practices among Romance language librarians", Collection and Curation, Vol. 40 No. 1, pp. 24-30. https://doi.org/10.1108/CC-12-2019-0047