Handbook of Electronic and Digital Acquisitions

Citation

Law, D. (2007), "Handbook of Electronic and Digital Acquisitions", Library Review, Vol. 56 No. 5, pp. 427-428. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530710750662

The Handbook of Electronic and Digital Acquisitions aims to steer librarians through the process of evaluating, choosing, and managing electronic resources as they expand their collection development policies to include electronic databases. This welcome goal is tempered by the fact that the focus is entirely on the USA. Some of the content is then simply redundant for non‐US readers.

The first two chapters are well written but poorly edited in that there is significant overlap of content, although one deals with acquisitions and copyright and the other with fair use and copyright. The examination of current US copyright law is generally interesting and well done, but the “how‐to” deal with copyright issues sections are so specific to the US legal domain as to be of little practical value to others.

The third chapter is very much a primer with a step‐by‐step guide on how to perform evaluations and almost two‐thirds of the chapter taken up by sample forms. By chapter 4 the book really hits its stride with a good piece by McMullen and others on e‐collection development strategies – collection development for e‐resources being a much neglected topic. This is followed by Best with a good case study from the Auburn University at Montgomery on selection issues. Slater and Johnson have a very good piece on virtual reference software and the book concludes with an oddly passionate but again US focussed piece by Zhang and Williams on EDI.

This is in many ways an excellent book. It has no real academic pretensions, but aims to be a handy vade‐mecum closer to “The Idiot's Guide … ” approach than reporting novel findings and research. It is full of tables, sample forms, diagrams, and step through lists; it is easy to read and pleasantly slang and jargon free. Like most librarians it concentrates exclusively on the commercial sector and ignores completely the interesting issue of acquiring non‐commercial digital content. It is however, very attractively priced, compared with most of our professional literature at under £20. The fact that it is aimed at the American market does mean that some of the writing has to be approached with caution, but it is a welcome addition to the bookshelf.