Cooperative Collection Development

Abstract

This article evaluates the past, present, and future of cooperative collection development (CCD) from the perspective of a faculty member in library and information science education. The first section gives assumptions about the nature of CCD prior to arrival of the Internet, including the various forms of CCD activities and the inherent administrative and financial costs associated with implementation. Formal CCD may not have been a cost-effective way of increasing the storehouse of available research materials. The article next discusses the positive and negative consequences of the Internet for CCD. While email, file transfer, and digitization are simplifying document delivery, reliance on the Internet may lead to less attention to traditional CCD and to a devaluing of print formats. While the future of CCD is murky, individual research libraries, except for the very largest, may have a lesser role to play. The future of CCD may lie in providing financial subsidies to fund large Storehouses of digital records.