Collection Development Policies

Carrigan argues that “libraries exist because of the benefits they make possible to patrons and others, which benefits derive essentially from libraries' collections” and that because the role of collections in providing benefits, collection development is the critical function in a library (Carrigan, 1995). The main goal of collection development process is to meet the information needs of the community users through identification, selection, acquisition, and evaluation of a collection of library resources for a community of users. Therefore, the collection development process tries to assure the quality of the collection by maintaining its strength and correct its weaknesses. The collection development policy is the written statement of the process that provides information about the scope and the nature of the existing collection, assists in the budgetary allocation, and gives the staff a working tool to be used in the selection process (ALA, 1979).In general, changes in community use patterns, staff turnover and lack of consistency in funding are reasons making written collection development policies useful for libraries. A collection development policy includes a clear statement of overall institutional objectives, clientele presentation and their needs assessment, details of the subject areas and formats selected, as well as ways in dealing with donation, complaints and censorship, and ways in practicing collection evaluation, collection deselection and discards (Evans, 1995). ALA (1996) outlines three types of collection policies: conspectus approach, a combination of conspectus-like data and narrative statements, and narrative statements alone, although other types of policies have also been developed.

The collection development process has been long studied and clarified for physical libraries but the explosion of the Internet with its plethora of information and the development of the electronic media and databases raise different issues for collection development and other library services (Intner, 2001; Norman, 1997). These changes led to the opinion that collection development is part of the collection management, which includes "collection policy development, materials budget allocation, selection, collection analysis, collection use and user studies, training and organization of collection development staff, preservation, and cooperative collection development" (Hunter, 2005). Bodi (2005) argues that the observed diminishing hierarchy and control, nonlinear thinking, and the blurring of the boundaries impose on libraries the need of customizing information for their users, specifically, collection management policies to become user-centered.

The collection development policies for digital libraries

A digital library is an “organizations that provide the resources, including the specialized staff, to select, structure, offer intellectual access to, interpret, distribute, preserve the works so that they are readily and economically available for use by a defined community or set of communities” (Digital Library Federation). The advantages of digital libraries are indubitable: little physical space requirements and lower maintenance cost compared to the traditional libraries, no physical or time boundaries, ease in adapting to technical innovations (NISO Framework Advisory Group, 2004), additional content and enhanced functionality, improve resource sharing, ease of archiving, and incorporation with teaching technologies (University of Otawa, 2004).

The management of digital documents deals with different basic issues such as: types of documents that may be selected, new evaluation criteria, and the larger set of resources from which the selection is done, but the digital documents and resources still need to be collected, evaluated, and then organized (Kovacs, 2000). Collection development responsibilities for digital libraries have been, therefore, expanded to include “community analysis, planning for collection building, collection development policies, selection, selection tools, publishing, intellectual freedom and censorship, weeding, and collection evaluation (Nisonger, 1994). The extension specifically refers to: web sites and digital resources evaluation (McGeachin, 1998; LaGuardia, 1992; Norman, 1997), budget, licensing, presentation (Wallis, 2002), coping with resources instability (Kastens), access vs. ownership (Harloe, 1994), technical compatibility, copyright, access requirements, security, staff workload, and training of the users. Also, studies have shown that users focus more on information access than on the physical location of information and that research habits largely vary with the subject (Healy, 2002). Therefore, as Demas anticipated in 1989, the development of the electronic media induces changes in the following collection development strategies areas:

• service implications of collection decisions
• collection policy
• implementation of new evaluation criteria,
• development of skills to select and manage electronic information
• economics of information

Also, the development of digital media and technology and an increasing quantity of information lately have emphasized the need for cooperative collection development, which may mean “co-operating with other research libraries on the licensing of digital content, providing seamless user access to digital content from different providers, or negotiating the right to maintain access to licensed older content even after a subscription has been cancelled” (Hunter, 2005).

Since a policy statement is “a document that represents a plan of action and information used to guide the staff’s thinking and decision making” (Evans, 1995), with so many changes undergoing within collection development, a policy statement is even more necessary as ever before. Also, due to the larger number of issues to be taken in consideration, the decisions process regarding the collection development involves more than library administrators and collection development personnel, but also the liaison librarians with their departmental counterparts and department chairs, IT personnel, and legal personnel.

The collection development policies for self-archived collections

The increasing budgetary constraints and increased demand for information access led universities and other non-profit organizations to create institutional repositories and/or open archives to counteract these concerns. Institutional repositories and open archives allow self-archiving of electronic documents making them freely available without any specialized selector intervention and it is largely recognized that these collections will be used only if the content is relevant, accessible, and promoted (McDonald, 2003; Brown, 2002). However, because the quality of the content cannot be verified against reference sources, and because it is time consuming and too costly to check for the Intellectual Property Rights of the submitted documents, selection for self-archiving collections is done by the authors or any other registered person at the time of document submission. Therefore, the collection development policies raise different issues. However, as Callan argues, the existence of a policy suggests that self-archiving is valued and that it encourages authors to deposit their papers, and it also facilitates permission negotiations (Callan, 2004).

Hunter (2005) considers that the OAI-PMH architecture implies that collection development has to be addressed at two distinct levels:

• data providers - concerned with the collection development aspects of their own service, as content,
• service providers – concerned with the balance of subject coverage, the resource types included, and the quality levels of the content being selected.

Hunters (2005) also consider long-term sustainability as a very important issue for collection development of the self-archived collections. Long-term sustainability or digital preservation refers to the need for ongoing strategic and financial support from the host institution, and the need to ensure continued long-term access to the content of repositories. Therefore, digital preservation requires: file formats preservation risks and possibility of format conversion, maintenance of information about stored file formats, and the need of appropriate but standard metadata use (Moore, 2001).

Therefore, collection development policies for self-archived collections represent the guidelines for the authors or any other registered user that submit documents, and the collection development policies for open archive repositories should:

• clearly state the goals of the repository,
• clearly delimit the fields that will be covered,
• clearly define the community users to be served,
• define types of documents that may be accepted and the format of the documents
• state digital preservation policies
• include submission procedures
• include Intellectual Property Rights
• define metadata quality standards (Gadd, 2003; Pinfield, 2003)

Although institutional repositories and open archives are developed through self-archiving, due to the impact they might have on the scholastic research world, collection evaluation need to be done periodically in order to ensure that stated goals and user needs are fulfilled.

References

American Library Association (1979). Guidelines for collection development. David Perkins, ed. Chicago: ALA.

American Library Association (1996), Guide for Written Collection Policy Statements,. Chicago, IL: American Library Association.

Bodi, S. and Maier-O’Shea, K (2005). The Library of Babel: Making Sense of Collection Management in a Postmodern World. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 31:2, pp. 143–150.

Brown, D. (2002). Open-archives need controls. Information World Review. pp.21

Callan, P. (2004). The development and implementation of a university-wide self-archiving policy at Queensland University of Technology (QUT): Insights from the frontline. Retrieved online at http://eprints.qut.edu.au/archive/00000573/ on November 5, 2005.

Carrigan, D. (1995). Toward a theory of collection development. Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory, 19:1, pp. 97-106.

Demas, S. (1989). Mainstreaming electronic formats. Library Acquisitions: Practice & Theory, Vol. 13, pp.221-232.

Digital Library Federation. Retrieved online at http://www.diglib.org/about/dldefinition.htm on November 5, 2005.

Evans, G. Edward (1995). Developing Library and Information Center Collections. 3rd ed. Englewood, CO : Libraries Unlimited.

Gadd, E. (2003). The Intellectual Property Rights Issues Facing Self-archiving : Key Findings of the RoMEO Project. D-Lib Magazine, 9:9. Retrieved online at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september03/gadd/09gadd.html on November 11, 2005.

Harloe, B. and Budd, J. M. (1994). Collection Development and Scholarly Communication in the Era of Electronic Access. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 20:2.

Healey, W.L. (2002) The voice of the user : where students and faculty go for information. Retrieved online at http://www.outsellinc.com on November 3, 2005.

Hunter, P. and Ukoln, D. (2005). Institutional repositories, aggregator services and collection development : ePrints UK supporting study, no. 2 . Retrieved online at http://www.rdn.ac.uk/projects/eprints-uk/docs/studies/coll-development/coll-development.pdf on November 7, 2005.

Intner, S. (2001). Impact of the Internet on collection development: where are we now? Where are we headed? An informal study. Library Collections, Acquisitions, & Technical Services, 25, pp. 307–322.

Kastens, K. [et all.] (2005). Questions and challenges arising in building the collection of a digital library for education : lessons from five years of DLESE. D-Lib Magazine, 11:11. Retrieved online at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november05/kastens/11kastens.html on November 11, 2005.

Kovacs, D. K. and Elkordy, A. (2000). Collection development in cyberspace: building an electronic library collection. Library Hi Tech, 18: 4, pp. 335-359.

LaGuardia, C. and Bentley, S. (1992). Electronic databases: will old collection development policies still work? Online. 16:4, pp.60.

McDonald, J. (2003). A recipe for a successful digital archive : collection development for digital archives. Against the Grain, 15:1, pp. 22-24.

McGeachin, Robert B. (1998). Selection criteria for web-based resources in a science and technology library collections. Retrieved online at http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/98-spring/article2.html on September 1, 2005.

Moore, R. [et al.] (2001). Collection-Based Persistent Digital Archives - Part 1. D-Lib Magazine, 6:3. Retrieved online at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march00/moore/03moore-pt1.html on November 10, 2005.

NISO Framework Advisory Group (2004). A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections. 2nd ed. Retrieved online at http://www.niso.org/framework/Framework2.html On November 14, 2005.

Nisonger, T. E. (1994). Should courses in acquisitions and collection development be combined or separate? In P. J. Johnson & S.S. Intner (eds.) Recruiting, educating and training librarians for collection development (pp. 127-143). Westport, CT : Greenwood Press.

Norman, O.G. (1997). The impact of electronic information sources on collection development : a survey of current practice. Library Hi Tech, 15:1-2, pp.123-132.

Pinfield, S. (2003). Open Archives and UK Institutions : An Overview. D-Lib Magazine, 9:3. Retrieved online at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march03/pinfield/03pinfield.html on November 7, 2005

University of Otawa. Collection Development Policies. Retrieved online at http://www.biblio.uottawa.ca/page-e.php?s=12&n=ptq-dtl-ctn on November12, 2005.

Wallis, T. (2002). How electronic resources are affecting collection development policies. Retrieved online at http://www.ausport.gov.au/fulltext/2002/siw/ercdp.asp on November 14, 2005.