This guide serves as an academic departmental planning instrument and provides a description of the various collections, goals, and policies of Southeast Missouri State University's Kent Library. An overview provides information about the library's mission, funding sources and allocation procedures, departmental library liaisons, overall selection…

The purpose of this manual is to provide support for selectors as part of an intensive training program at the University of Tennessee (UT) Knoxville libraries to help balance selection decisions and to meet the needs of both undergraduates and researchers. The following major topics are addressed: (1) collection development at UT Knoxville…

This examination of the past and present states of collection development in the research library covers background information, theories, and associated problems. A historical review of methods that have been and are currently being used for collection development includes discussions of the changes imposed by World War II on the practice of…

Written for the non-librarian or educated layperson, this manual provides step-by-step information on how to establish a school library. Although it is targeted for an African audience, the manual is general enough to provide information on school library development regardless of geographic location. The handbook begins by addressing the value of…

Intended as a guide and resource for staff and volunteers in small public libraries in Alaska, this manual is divided into the following chapters: (1) "Establishing a Library," which covers the establishment by ordinance or by organization of a non-profit corporation, information on drafting bylaws, and the role and responsibilities of…

Examines the increasing information value of government documents as resource materials, the effects of information technology on access to government documents, and the resulting need for cooperation among archivists and librarians in selection and administration of these materials. (CLB)

A study at the Emory University School of Business Administration library compared the effectiveness of faculty members and librarians as book selectors. Effectiveness was measured by comparing selected titles with the Baker list published by the Harvard Business School and with business periodical reviews, and by examining circulation records.…

This article presents results of a survey of 100 U.S. libraries focusing on their audio and video collections. Discussion covers genre or type of video collected, popular feature video titles, nonfeature films, nationwide jobbers and wholesalers and local distributors of audios and videos, and popular audiocassettes (how-to, motivational tapes).…

The purpose of this research was to investigate who should be responsible in the selection of library materials, and to compare the primary responsibility by country and type of library. A content analysis was used to examine 70 articles relating to selection responsibility. The articles cover the period 1950 to 1998, with a wide range of…

Investigates the effects of electronic information sources on collection development in 15 academic libraries. Areas studied included: the materials budget, collection development policies, and licenses; identifying, evaluating, selecting, and developing the electronic sources collection; training subject specialists to use electronic resource…

Addresses the process of journal deselection from the point of view of justice and argues that when journal cuts are necessary, libraries should first, reduce all departments to core holdings; second, ask departments with expensive journals for permission to implement an efficiency principle; third, if refused permission, implement an equal…

Shows how a well-respected collection development tool contains ideological frames, using the "Public Library Catalog" (PLC) as an example. Evaluation by library science graduate students indicate that the PLC makes recommendations that have an imbalance of perspectives, overemphasize a particular facet or theory within a field, lack authority,…

Discusses the use of academic library circulation statistics to assess whether user needs are being met and describes a study at Stetson University that investigated collection development practices by comparing circulation statistics for books selected by faculty in support of departmental curricula with those of librarian selections. (Author/LRW)

Discussion of evaluating academic journals for collection management decisions focuses on a methodological framework for evaluating journals not ranked by impact factors in Journal Citation Reports. Compares nonranked journals with ranked journals and then applies this framework to a case study in the field of medical science. (LRW)

Argues that evaluating a library's collection is not an acceptable substitute for evaluating the collection development process and its developers. With increasing materials costs, overselection can be much more serious than underselection. Several useful methods for evaluating collection development incorporate statistics regarding proportional…