International Yearbook of Library and Information Management 2000‐2001: Collection Management

Citation

Hurych, J. (2001), "International Yearbook of Library and Information Management 2000‐2001: Collection Management", Collection Building, Vol. 20 No. 4, pp. 214-216. https://doi.org/10.1108/cb.2001.20.4.214.1

The International Yearbook of Library and Information Management promises to be a “thematic, refereed annual covering current issues, emerging trends, ‘best practice’ and future scenarios in the broad field of library science and information management”, according to the editor, Professor G.E. Gorman of Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. The first volume, subtitled Collection Management, is divided into five parts that explore general as well as case specific issues of collection development and management.

Part 1 (“People, principles, and problems”) deals with digital information and its impact on collection management, with the issue of intellectual property, mix of politics, policy and power, with economic dimension of resources, especially in the digital environment and with censorship, cultural diversity and globalization of information.

Part 2 (“Electronic publications, access and acquisitions”) focuses on more specific concerns, such as the state of electronic publications, serials management in economically disadvantaged countries, access vs ownership issues, electronic journal access and the role of acquisitions in the electronic environment. Part 3 (“Cooperative collection management and storage facilities”) deals with issues of cooperative collection development and the role of consortia, as well as with the development of storage facilities that are important even in the electronic era.

Part 4 (“Evaluating and weeding”) discusses specific challenges and approaches to collection management in the field of collection evaluation methods and techniques and dilemmas related to weeding or deselection of collections. Part 5 (“Preservation and archives”) assesses the impact of digitization technology on preservation, especially of rare books collections and discusses effective selection and appraisal of archival materials.

Individual chapters in each thematic part have been written by experts in the field. Every chapter is followed by references to other sources of reading, including quite a few electronic sources. The list of contributors is impressive and includes library school professors as well as practicing librarians and archivists, primarily from the USA, UK, Australia, and New Zealand. The emphasis is clearly on the English‐speaking library world, although there are three authors with library experience from China, Vietnam, and Singapore.

The Yearbook is intended as essential reading for librarians and other information professionals; it is based on research, practice and reflection. As challenging scholarly reading for practitioners, it should be included in every academic library.