The Kovacs Guide to Electronic Library Collection Development: Essential Core Subject Collections, Selection Criteria, and Guidelines

Citation

Walter, S. (2005), "The Kovacs Guide to Electronic Library Collection Development: Essential Core Subject Collections, Selection Criteria, and Guidelines", Collection Building, Vol. 24 No. 3, pp. 106-106. https://doi.org/10.1108/01604950510608357

Each year professional associations and LIS programs offer continuing education workshops on the principles of collection development for electronic resources. These programs are successful both because collection development for electronic resources is so critical to most libraries in the twenty‐first century, and because the topic remains less than completely covered by traditional LIS textbooks. Kovacs and Robinson have provided a valuable “workshop in a box” in this new addition to the literature.

The Kovacs Guide – a substantial revision of the lead author's Building Electronic Library Collections (2000) – is divided into three parts: Recommended Practices; Recommended Evaluation Guidelines, Selection Criteria and Core Collections; and Web Collection Development Resources. Each section, described briefly below, will be useful to beginning and experienced librarians alike.

Part 1 provides an introductory primer to a variety of emergent professional issues, including developing a collection development plan for electronic resources, cataloging web‐based resources, and integrating digital reference into one's service profile. It also provides a cogent introduction to the increasingly important subject of licensing. Part 2 focuses on core collections and criteria for evaluation and selection of electronic resources in areas such as business information, scientific information, health information, and career reference. Each section also includes a “core collection” of electronic resources in a subject area, and a listing of collection development tools that the reader can employ in the further development of a customized collection. Finally, Part 3 provides a listing of resources for additional information (e.g. discussion lists) and of access points to subject‐specific current awareness tools and web portals.

Even were the coverage of the topic not enough to convince the reader of the utility of this tool, the authors have made the text even more useful by including practical questions in their policy overviews (e.g. “Why do some libraries incorporate records for web‐accessible resources in the library catalog?”), and by integrating discussions of successful projects into their descriptions of particular subject areas. As a result, the reader finishes each chapter with a clear sense of important professional issues, a framework for evaluating resources and services, a core collection of electronic resources on which to build his or her own collection, and a list of places where additional resources may be found. Few textbooks provide such a cogent, useful and practitioner‐friendly review of both theory and practice.

There is, in fact, only one failing common to textbooks that is also found in this work – its price. At $125, it is difficult to recommend this title to the pre‐service librarians and new professionals who might find it most useful. It is difficult even to recommend it as part of a library's professional collection, even though it would be a useful addition to any such collection. If, however, one really does consider this well‐designed text as a “workshop in a box”, then the cost seems relatively reasonable (especially if one considers the savings in terms of travel costs). In that context, The Kovacs Guide should find a home in every academic collection supporting LIS instruction – on its own, or as a complement to the equally useful, but more moderately priced, Introduction to Reference Work in the Digital Age (2003) – and in any professional collection supporting librarians working to provide access to digital collections and services.