Presents a strategic planning model originally developed for university research and illustrates its usefulness for academic libraries. Library development and fund-raising activities are used as examples to illustrate the various stages of strategic planning, including scanning the environment, designing the plan, acceptance, and adoption.…

This study determined how the 12 academic libraries in the Council for Interinstitutional Cooperation (CIC) approached the challenge of identifying a constituency for fund-raising development activities. Topics discussed include results of a literature review; university organization for development activities; staffing; examples of achievements;…

Reviews previously proposed schemes of classical rationality in book selection, describes new approaches to rational choice behavior, and presents a model of book selection based on bounded rationality in a garbage can decision process. The role of tacit knowledge and symbolic content in the selection process are also discussed. (102 references)…

Describes ways in which collection development at the Smithsonian Institution Libraries has been affected by the libraries' position within a museum context. The discussion covers the adoption by the libraries of a nomenclature that applies to management of museum objects collections and their capitalization on allied interests in such areas as…

Describes the conspectus collection evaluation process and its utility to smaller libraries, as demonstrated by the Library and Information Resources for the Northwest project. The discussion includes the costs of this method in staff time, the value of a completed conspectus, and problems with the methodology. (13 notes with references) (CLB)

Describes a survey of 47 postsecondary educational institutions in three prairie provinces of Canada that examined the extent of pressures to remove, relocate, or reclassify library materials between 1980 and 1985, and the effectiveness of written selection policies in dealing with such pressures. Specific censorship incidents are reported in…

A comparison of subject- and publisher-based book approval plans for academic libraries found publisher-based plans to be more successful for purchasing domestic publications, and subject-based plans for international ones. Library collections, organization, and vagaries of the publishing industry form the basis for selecting the plan which is…

Discusses collection development policy as means to express and systematize guidelines for collection building that fulfill three basic functions: the referential, the generative, the rhetorical. Division of policy into subject categories, and use of "collection levels" to rank the collection and collecting effort for each subject are…

Discusses specific selection criteria used in making collection development decisions and presents both a model for arriving at a selection decision, and a mechanism for assigning a priority to each selection. (CLB)

Studies characteristics of a multilateral cooperative selection program for small rare book collections and describes success of such a program at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and University of North Carolina-Greensboro. Highlights include five guidelines as prerequisites to formal agreement and a cooperative collection development…

Reprint of a 1964 article by David Kaser which presented mathematical formulas for estimating the collection sizes (in volumes) required to ensure minimum adequacy of academic library collections at institutions with widely different characteristics. Current article presents new formulas and illustrates their application at specific institutions.…

Argues that the internal organization of collection development and the nature of science and scholarship lead to inevitable gaps in collection development. The structural and intellectual causes of collection development gaps are analyzed, and a number of areas whose literatures are especially vulnerable to being ignored or overlooked by…

This study examined circulation and inhouse use of 13,029 randomly selected volumes--both serials and monographs in all subject areas--in a university library over a 7-year period. Results challenged inference of internal use from circulation figures and the appropriateness of weeding based on lack of circulation alone. A 26-item chronological…

Explores the role of the academic rare book library in terms of its financial justification and concludes that the primary justification lies in its utility as a research library. It is also concluded that institutions unable to support a proper rare book collection might be advised to develop appropriate special collections instead. (19…

Describes a study that examined the feasibility of automating the process of library collection analysis, using collections in botany and mathematical analysis as the study population and bibliographic utility databases as sources of holdings information. The discussion covers the effectiveness of the methodology and potential uses of the results.…