Collection Development in an Electronic Environment

Citation

Duckett, B. (2001), "Collection Development in an Electronic Environment", Library Review, Vol. 50 No. 3, pp. 146-159. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2001.50.3.146.4

Where once libraries were concerned with selecting, owning and housing print and other materials, user needs are increasingly met through various mixtures of ownership and access, print and electronic resources, purchasing and licensing. As a result, collection development has become more complex and more uncertain. In this themed issue of Library Trends, collection development is reviewed in the context of the rapidly emerging electronic environment. How have we arrived at the present situation? Are traditional collecting and cataloguing methods still applicable? How can we assess, and how should we select, electronic resources? How do electronic resources impact on our management of print resources? What will the future bring? Sixteen US academic librarians here bring us 14 articles that address these issues.

We start with a review of the major trends in collection development during the last two decades. This includes the “serials crisis”, access/ownership and print/electronic developments, resource sharing and preservation issues. We then have a summary of developments in new electronic journals, e‐publishing and other technological aspects. Archiving, usage, utility, access and copyright are identified as key issues, while some future scenarios are suggested. The next three contributions look at issues relating to the selection of resources. The traditional selection criteria – quality, relevance, aesthetic and technical aspects, and cost remain, but take on new meanings. A number of electronic selection aids are described. Another contributor looks in more detail at the pricing, licensing, functionality and archiving aspects of electronic sources; while a third contributor considers demand, use, library infrastructure and interface problems, critically, from the humanities viewpoint.

Web site evaluation and selection are a major issue, and the lack of consensus as to what constitutes a “good” Web site is considered. A rather alarming report is featured in which 64 per cent of the Web pages retrieved to answer a reference enquiry contained no relevant information, and of the remainder a quarter contained incorrect information. CD‐ROMs also present novel problems for evaluation and selection, and these are considered in the context of full text literary products and compared to Web‐based access. The need for “value‐added” features is seen as critical.

Selection of a different sort is the selection of traditional materials for digitisation. The “Harvard Model”, a nine‐question decision‐making matrix for selecting resources for digitisation covering copyright, users, use, etc., is considered.

The implications of electronic resources for serials cancellation and remote storage are examined, including the cancellation of e‐journals themselves. In addition to the traditional criteria such as use, price and duplication, there are new criteria specific to electronic formats such as vendor competition, consortium agreements, and archives. How e‐resources interact with the print collections is another issue to consider.

The reduced role of bibliography is another issue, plus the need to re‐think cataloguing: we need to re‐formulate collection description and access information, perhaps using subject‐specific Web pages. Finally there are several contributions that look at the wider issues of how e‐resources impact on collection development, subject selection and consortia. Shared resources will become more important and collection development a group activity. The relation of the print versus electronic duopoly needs to be set against the wider role of scholarly communication. Finally we need to consider how to educate our new generations of librarians in schools of library and information science to cope with all these problems.

While there is a deal of overlap in these contributions, there is also a rich variety of viewpoints to stimulate thinking. We will not be concerned with everything here at the same time, but at issue are all current issues, and this collection is a useful resource to have to hand when such issues land on our desks, as they surely will, or have done so already. The US academic background is not a problem here – we are all becoming virtual libraries – though the book is rather drab. It is, however, well indexed. It will be a useful addition to staff collections and managers’ desks.