Collection Building Research Articles

Library Allocations: Faculty and and Librarians Assess 'Fairness'

Simon Fraser University Library undertook an assessment of its collection allocations to reassure faculty and librarians that our collection building was consistent with the University's academic priorities. Mindful of the problems inherent in value-laden formulaic approaches, we examined a variety of factors in identifying potentially misaligned allocations.

Think Globally, Act Locally

Summary Despite numerous cooperative collection development endeavors, the building of library collections has remained a highly individual and local practice. The physicality of bound volumes has posed a distinct limitation on our ability to share collections, although libraries have made huge strides in recent years. Electronic resources and the ability to digitize our physical holdings offer the potential to redirect our investments in collection building to the creation of a global network that would serve an international community of scholars. By facilitating the creation of discipline-based portals to knowledge resources, librarians can channel their efforts to the benefit of many without sacrificing the quality of local relationships. To accomplish this, libraries need to develop collectively built and managed Web sites that supplant the need for autonomous, selector-created “webliographies” and that greatly expand the number of sources that can be identified and described. Selectors, freed of the individual responsibility to shoulder the increasingly heavy and ultimately unsustainable load of tracking a proliferation of resources in a variety of formats and states of publication, can turn their attention to the capture of more elusive, but important, material; to more detailed evaluation of the use of information resources; toward improvements in the user interface of portals; or toward the transformation of scholarly communication, with the discipline-based portal serving as a magnet for attracting new forms of scholarly thought and research.

A PALMM Grows in Florida

Abstract This paper describes the inception, growth and current state of the PALMM (Publication of Archival, Library and Museum Materials) program of the libraries of the public universities of Florida. When PALMM was initiated in 1999 it was merely an attempt to establish a common “look and feel” for several digital collections being built at different universities. From these beginnings, PALMM has grown into a program that facilitates cooperative collection building, encourages the use of common standards and guidelines, provides central data storage and computer applications, and attempts to publicize and promote the use of PALMM collections.

Assessment of the Liaison Program at Baylor University

ABSTRACT All forty-four departments liaisons (teaching faculty) and fifteen librarian consultants (library faculty) at Baylor University were surveyed to assess the university's liaison program, which was established to facilitate collection development in a library with a decentralized model of collection building. Survey responses and high return rate revealed that most liaisons were interested in the program, although both groups interacted at a marginal level and indicated ambiguity toward the appropriate role of the librarian consultant. To reinvigorate the program, the authors made a series of recommendations to the academic departments and the libraries through a report to the library administration. The principle recommendation was the establishment of a library committee to develop a comprehensive vision statement for the program and clear goals and objectives for all participants.

“Into the Middle of the Thing” (With Apologies to Horace)

Temple University Libraries received an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant in 2000 for the development of a digital image collection. Based on this experience, the authors discuss a computer and manual tracking system developed to control and manage the collection building effort. The need to accurately track the progress of materials and the workflow in the digitization project was not fully understood at the beginning of the project. Thus, after the tracking system was designed, it was necessary to populate it with information reflecting work on the project from the beginning.

Greenstone: open‐source digital library software with end‐user collection building

The Greenstone digital library software is an open‐source system for the construction and presentation of information collections. Collections built with Greenstone offer effective full‐text searching and metadata‐based browsing facilities that are attractive and easy to use. Moreover, they are easily maintainable and can be augmented and rebuilt entirely automatically. The system is extensible: software “plugins” accommodate different document and metadata types. Greenstone incorporates an interface that makes it easy for people to create their own library collections. Collections may be built and served locally from the user’s own Web server, or (given appropriate permissions) remotely on a shared digital library host. End users can easily build new collections styled after existing ones from material on the Web or from their local files (or both), and collections can be updated and new ones brought online at any time.

Strategic Development of the National Library of China, 2001–2005

The years 2001–2005 are of critical importance for China and its National Library as the country continues to open out to the rest of the world and pursue economic progress. To meet prescribed targets, strategies will be pursued in the areas of collection building, networking, the development of a digital library, the introduction of standards, access to services, research and development, and national and international cooperation. Human resources will undergo a major reorganization to improve efficiency; steps will be taken to attract and encourage the best staff and build a corps of elite professionals. Immediate tasks include a revision of collection policy, preservation, installation of an integrated library system for foreign publications, improvement of services to the legislature and government, cooperation with other Chinese libraries, and digitization of some important collections.

Selection for Digital Conversion in Academic Libraries

Electronic technology has begun to change the way scholars conduct their research. Before this new approach to scholarly inquiry becomes a viable and productive method in institutions of higher learning, the existing resources that a scholar normally would use in the library must be converted to a digital format in order to be accessible electronically. How do academic libraries set about creating a body of knowledge and begin to convert traditional print collections to a digital format in order to satisfy what today’s researchers want? This article examines previous methods of selection and collection building, and applies those supporting principles to today’s collection-building efforts for digital collections.

Designing Interfaces for Distributed Electronic Collections: The Lessons of Traditional Librarianship

For digital libraries to fulfil their true potential, they must display features and exploit skills more readily associated with the traditional library service. To some extent this has already happened: collection management has become the process of Internet resource discovery, while document cataloguing skills have been applied to the creation of Internet resource metadata repositories. This paper argues that there are certain areas of traditional classification, knowledge management and physical library arrangement that have special applicability to electronic collection building. However, librarians have often failed to appreciate this relevance. In particular, they have not appreciated the significance of browsing in the traditional library, and have replicated this failure in their approach to electronic collection building. Concentrating on British academic libraries, this paper explores knowledge management at the level of the local library, the Metropolitan Area Network and the United Kingdom's Distributed National Electronic Resource. The principle of ownership of intellectual property is examined in terms of its relationship with interface design, and positive future trends are described.

The Convergence of User Needs, Collection Building, and the Electronic Publishing Market Place

Summary Success in meeting user needs was assessed at California State University, Fullerton, by means of a survey, and at Lehigh University by an examination of database usage statistics. Implications for service provision, user education, and collection building were discussed.

Acquisitions, the Internet and the Academic Library

Electronic resources are becoming a common and useful collection building tool in many libraries, especially academic libraries. This paper presents an overview of how librarians and library staff are using these tools, what tools are being used, and what benefits and drawbacks they present. Web sites, OPACs, listservs, and direct library-vendor links are a sampling of the variety of electronic resources which aid acquisition departments in their choices and ordering decisions. Specific examples and useful web sites are included.

Gifts in academic and special libraries: a selected bibliography

From the time the Reverend John Harvard donated his collection of books in 1638 to start the library at the newly established Harvard University [1], gifts have played an important role in the development of collections in U.S. academic and special libraries. Today, gifts are still vital to most libraries as publication costs rise and book budgets shrink. Over the years, much has been written on material gifts to libraries, from their use in collection building to the practical points of handling gifts and donors in the technical services area. Culled from the pool of literature, this annotated bibliography is a collection of many of the most useful and informative sources written on the various aspects of gifts in libraries.

The Architectural Museum: A Founder's Perspective

Architectural materials have been collected since at least the early thirteenth century. However, they have only been recognized as the basis of a new entity, the architectural museum, since 1979 when some fifteen recently formed institutions met in Helsinki to form the International Confederation of Architectural Museums (ICAM ).1 Since then the membership has grown to nearly 100 members, including museums, archives, and collections housed in larger institutions such as libraries and schools. In approaching architectural collections, I can most usefully discuss some of the key issues from my own personal perspective gained in framing and developing the collection of the Centre Canadien d'Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA). It is not my intention to describe the CCA's holdings, which has been done in earlier publications.2 Most pertinent is what has been learned about the significance and special aspects of collection building and related research in the ten years since the CCA opened as a public institution in 1989.3 This has been experience gained in presenting exhibitions, preparing publications, and, most recently, with the reception of scholars in residence at the CCA Study Centre.4 The nature of the collection cannot be separated from these activities nor from the institution's founding, its purposes, its mode of operation, or its locus. In 1989, looking forward to the next decade, Adolf K. Placzek was prescient in underscoring the interconnectedness of an architecture museum's collection in a broader institutional

From Ownership to Access

Summary In 1992, Auraria Library fully embraced the idea that meeting user information needs is a collection development activity which should be funded from the materials budget whether accomplished by purchasing material for permanent retention or by acquiring one-time access for an individual user. This article discusses the restructuring of a traditional Interlibrary Loan Department into Information Delivery/Interlibrary Loan (ID/ILL) and its move to Collection Development Services. Because access to resources was funded from the learning materials budget along with ownership, it became necessary to rethink the Library's collection development philosophy. Implementation of the new philosophy required modification of collection building practices and the creation of aggressive information delivery programs.

A student-centered, classroom-based approach to collection building

While surveys are a popular method for assessing the quality of library collections, they are usually administered in the library or are sent to a sampling of students. Surveying students in the classroom using course-specific questionnaires and interviewing their instructors adds value to this method of collection building.

A new emphasis for correctional facilities' libraries

In reinterpreting its Bounds' decision in Casey vs. Lewis, the U.S. Supreme Court weakened the mandate creating prison legal collections, allowing other functions of the library to receive new emphasis. However, a true lesson is that legal collection building has been a microcosm of problems of academic collection building generally.

Erratum

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/01604959810227240. When citing the article, please cite: Elka Tenner, Suzanne D. Gyeszly, Julia M. Rholes, (1998), “Electronic and traditional sources for a newly established branch library: product availability and user preferences”, Collection Building, Vol. 17 Iss: 3, pp. 123 - 128.

Shifting Boundaries

In this paper I would like to take the reader on a whirlwind review of collection management practices and issues in research libraries in the United States. Although I will greatly compress and oversimplify the contemporary history of collection management, the brevity is not as extreme as it may at first appear, for it was not until the 1950s that collection development in the United States began to emerge as a coherent management science. Over a period of about thirty-five years, from roughly 1950 through the mid-1980s, collection building in research libraries in the United States was professionalized and codified. In the first part of this paper I will review three significant issues-the rapid expansion of education, scholarship, and library collections; the shift from collection development to collection management; and attempts at cooperative collection development-that influenced the evolution of collection management during this formative period.

Book Reviews

Journal of Fish BiologyVolume 53, Issue 4 p. 910-916 BOOK REVIEWS First published: 12 April 2005 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1095-8649.1998.tb01847.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Abstract Book reviews in this article. SEX, COLOR, AND MATE CHOICE IN GUPPIES. By Anne E. Houde. AQUALEX: A GLOSSARY OF AQUACULTURE TERMS. Edited by Margaret Eleftheriou. COLLECTION BUILDING IN ICHTHYOLOGY AND HERPETOLOGY. Edited by Theodore W. Pietsch and William D. Anderson, Jr. STOCKING AND INTRODUCTION OF FISH. Edited by Ian G. Cowx. RECREATIONAL FISHERIES: SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND MANAGEMENT ASPECTS. Edited by P. Hickley and H. Tompkins. OCEANOGRAPHY AND MARINE BIOLOGY: AN ANNUAL REVIEW. Vol. 35. Edited by A. D. Ansell, R. N. Gibson and Margaret Barnes. Volume53, Issue4October 1998Pages 910-916 RelatedInformation

Managing foreign book procurement: a case study of Pakistan

Discusses the two basic channels of book procurement ‐ the domestic market and imports (either directly or through local bookdealers). The former is the most popular method at present. Acquisition through this method is almost totally directed and controlled by availability of materials in the market, leaving only a limited choice for systematic collection building. Imports through the local bookdealer, favoured by special libraries in the mid‐1950s and 1960s, is no more employed owing to red‐tapism on the part of the dealer. The direct import system, which has proven beneficial in many respects for university libraries, has also gradually been given up. The reasons include: an uncertain import policy, import restrictions and trade embargoes against some countries because of political and ideological reasons, the fluctuating rate of the Pakistani rupee, hurdles in customs clearance, and, above all, the departure of competent personnel conversant with this kind of work to positions in OPEC countries.