Search results

Aims to compare and contrast different collection policies and shows a practical application of web‐based documentation.

The article is a case study and general review that discusses how significant numbers of libraries today are posting collection policies on the web, how these policies may differ in form and practice from those of the past, and how the Howard‐Tilton Memorial Library at Tulane University developed and applied one such policy of its own. It also discusses examples of relevant literature and other collection policy web sites.

Its implications point to the value of developing sets of narrative collection policy statements focusing on specific academic disciplines and of beginning the policy‐making process with an assessment of the academic profile of the university that the library supports.

General discussion of collection policies has been absent from the literature for some time and the article should be valuable to those libraries without collection policies or those with older printed policies languishing in file cabinets.

The academic library’s physical capacity and its service obligations to local users structured the traditional print collection. Largely freed of these constraints, the digital collection manager enjoys unprecedented freedoms but now contends with a collection susceptible to resource sprawl and scope ambiguity. This exploratory study aims to consider the possibility that intra-field social processes help to structure and routinize digital collection practice.

Lacking the constraints to which print collections are subject, electronic resource and digital library collections are more likely to reflect idiosyncratic institutional interests and therefore, to demonstrate significant variation. Evidence of homogeneity may suggest the influence of heretofore underexplored social structures. To determine the extent of such homogeneity, the author performed exploratory/descriptive content analyses on ten electronic resource collection development policies and six digital library collection development policies.

The data reveal among both the electronic resource and digital library collection policies significant uniformity. Content analyses demonstrate consistent themes (e.g. media, audience, selection priorities, etc.) and rhetoric. These findings lend support to the study’s central hypothesis regarding latent social structures. Analyses also reveal a set of unanticipated constraints unique to digital collection management.

Despite the breadth and maturity of literature addressing the Digital Turn in academic librarianship, relatively little attention has been paid to the social dimensions of collection management. This work represents an important corrective and suggests new theoretical approaches to the study of digital collection practice.

Library resources evolve daily with ongoing expansion of electronic offerings by publishers and vendors. Collection development policies have long been employed to guide decision making and inform stakeholders, but how are these policies serving libraries and their users as our collections continue to move online? This paper aims to discuss the role of collection development polices, past and present, and the challenge of collections moving to an electronic format.

The authors performed a content analysis to discover how academic libraries are addressing this change in collection development.

The paper finds that virtually all libraries do an excellent job of addressing the traditional elements of collection development. About half of the libraries mentioned electronic licensing issues in the policy, but most of those were general statements.

Although the library profession is well aware of the changes that electronic resources bring to libraries, there is not a lot of research on how collection development policies should guide electronic resource management. As shown in this research, it is often completely left out of the collection development policy process.

To identify the necessary components in the formulation of collection development policies.

The paper is based on both research about collection development policies and data compiled as a result of a survey of 16 centers of higher and technical education in Cuba.

Although the directors of university libraries and managers of collection development were aware of the process of collection development, few have collection development policies, and few have carried out user studies.

A model for a collection development policy for the system of university libraries is proposed.

G. Edward Evans defines “collection development” as “the process of assessing the strengths and weaknesses in a collection, and then creating a plan to correct the weaknesses and maintain the strengths.” He goes on to describe the collection development policy as “the written statement of that plan.…” Many librarians have acknowledged a responsibility to provide documentation of this process in the libraries they serve, yet few have done so. When the flush days of the sixties' Great Society were followed by the information explosion, inflation, and an era of accountability for service‐oriented institutions, the need for collection development policies became more urgent than it had been for decades. While selection of library materials has been of vital professional concern during most of the history of modern librarianship, it is only in the past decade that the preparation of selection or acquisitions policies (the terms have commonly been used interchangeably) and of collection development policies has received concentrated attention in library literature.

Reviews the established arguments for writing collection development policies, focusing on selection, planning, public relations and co‐operation. Identifies various practical and theoretical drawbacks, and illustrates these with examples from library literature. Concludes that a more flexible approach is needed in order to reflect the changing environments of publishing, library selection and acquisition.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a snapshot of some major collections-related trends and issues in current academic libraries today. These include using collection development policies; demand-driven acquisition (DDA) models; big deals; using the collections budget; rationalizing legacy print collections; stewarding local digital collections; and demonstrating value.

A web survey was developed and sent to 20 academic librarians via e-mail during the summer of 2016, along with a statement on the purpose of the study.

The findings are as follows: the collections budget is used to fund many costs other than content (such as memberships and MARC records); most libraries are experimenting with DDA in one form or another; most libraries financially support open access investments; most libraries participate in at least one collaborative print rationalization project; and libraries have diverse methods of demonstrating value to their institutions.

This was a very selective survey of North American academic libraries. Therefore, these findings are not necessarily valid on a broader scale.

Within the limitations above, the results provide librarians and others with an overview of current practices and trends related to key issues affecting collection development and management in North America.

These results are quite current and will enable academic librarians engaged in collection development and management to compare their current policies and practices with what is presented here. The results provide a current snapshot of the ways in which selected libraries are coping with transformative challenges and a rapidly changing environment.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the language of “weeding” (library deselection) within public library collection development policies in order to examine whether such policies and practices can be usefully connected to library and information science (LIS) theory, specifically to “Deweyan pragmatic adaptation” as suggested by Buschman (2017) in the pages of this journal.

This is a policy analysis of collection deselection policies from the 50 public libraries serving US state capitals, using Bacchi’s policy problem representation technique.

“Weeding” as described by these public library collection deselection policies is clearly pragmatic and oriented to increasing circulation to patrons, but the “Deweyan pragmatic adaptation” as reflected by many of those reviewed might better be defined as the pragmatism of Melvil Dewey rather than that of John Dewey.

Although this work reviewed policies from a very small sample of US public libraries, collection, selection and deselection language as shown in the policies studied appear to be consistent with neoliberal priorities and values in terms of prioritizing “circulation” and “customers,” which may have additional implications for the current transition from print to electronic materials in public libraries

John Dewey’s political philosophy and Carol Bacchi’s policy problem representation technique have not been widely used in policy analysis by LIS researchers, and this paper offers a number of suggestions for similar public library policy investigations.

The purpose of this study was to find out ways in which collection development practices in private university libraries in Kenya could be enhanced by the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs).

This paper is based on research that was carried out on the application of ICTs in collection development in selected private universities in Kenya. The study was done using a survey method. Three universities and a total of 72 respondents were purposively selected for the study. The respondents included librarians, faculty deans and postgraduate students from the three universities.

The findings indicated that ICTs were available in all the three selected universities but their application in collection development was not adequate in ensuring efficiency and in making sure that the library collections are effective in meeting the needs of the users.

With the changing information environment and users' information needs, libraries are being compelled to adopt ICTs in order to remain relevant and increase their value and meet the changing needs of the users. The paper recommends different ways of applying ICTs in all the processes of collection development to make the process more efficient and effective in meeting the needs of the users.

Electronic resources are becoming increasingly important to libraries of all types and sizes. Addresses the development of an electronic information resources collection development policy to guide the librarians at Penn State Harrisburg in the selection of electronic reference resources. Instead of focusing on how well a given item fits into or supports the collection, the policy gives general guidance on the selection of electronic resources. The general collection development guidelines for electronic information resources include relevance and potential use of the information, redundancy of the information contained in the product, demand for the information, ease of use of the product, availability of the information to multiple users, stability of the coverage of the resource, longevity of the information, cost of the product, predictability of pricing, equipment needed to provide access to the information, technical support, and availability of the physical space needed to house and store the information or equipment.