Collection Development in the Electronic Environment

Learn to allocate scarce library resources to meet learning, research, and service goals!

How can you buy more books and journals with less money, while also installing the latest software and hardware, paying staff to train faculty and students in its use, offering the new round-the-clock information services users demand, and redefining the traditional collection-centered model of the library? It sounds impossible, but these are the conflicting imperatives every collections librarian faces at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Collection Development in the Electronic Environment offers solid, practical advice from the experience of other librarians who have met the same challenges, as well as useful information from vendors.

Based on the conference Collection Development in the Electronic Environment: Shifting Priorities, this informative book suggests proven, effective strategies to deal with a librarian's most pressing problems. One case study shows how Iowa State University turned a cutback in journals into a new vision of what the library should be, involving a broad-based committee in the project. Other chapters discuss the specifics of budgeting for the unpredictable pricing of electronic materials, the increased demands on library staff, and the challenges of maintaining dual libraries—the electronic and the paper-based—both facing expensive issues of preservation.

Collection Development in the Electronic Environment offers help and advice on the most complex and difficult issues librarians confront:

• planning changes in library structure, function, and activities
• building new models for collection development
• identifying and fulfilling the needs of scholars in various disciplines
• redefining staff roles and responsibilities
• setting priorities in journal purchases
• using electronic innovations to enhance collection development
• dealing with copyright, fair use, and intellectual property in electronic formats