Collection Management for the 21st Century: : A Handbook for Librarians

Citation

Davis, D.G. and Jr (1998), "Collection Management for the 21st Century: : A Handbook for Librarians", Asian Libraries, Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 26-28. https://doi.org/10.1108/al.1998.7.1.26.3

The building and maintenance of library collections, as a subject for professional focus, has enjoyed increased attention in the years since the mid‐1980s for a variety of reasons ‐ evolving technology, proliferation of format mixes, variety of learning styles and declining financial resources, among others. The happy result of this renewed concern, enlivened by real and perceived crises, is the availability of insightful studies and thoughtful summaries such as this one.

The editors have selected 18 capable and engaging contributors to survey issues related to the current literature and changing status of collection management, as the profession considers the century ahead. Of these, 14 come from academic libraries and professional schools in the US; the remainder are from Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and the UK. Fourteen substantive chapters deal with emerging prospects of collection management in general, selection of materials and electronic technology, evaluation procedures, electronic delivery and preservation, organisation and budgeting, cooperation ‐ to enumerate the several parts. A final essay reviews the literature for the period 1990‐95, suggesting that both the bibliographic review and the work as a whole consciously build on the important work edited by Charles Osborn and Ross Atkinson, Collection Management: A New Treatise (JAI Press, 1990).

Though the well‐written chapters, each self‐contained, can in the aggregate seem repetitive at times, they come from authors who are knowledgable and passionate about the issues they examine. Some are more didactic, like William Monroe’s “The Role of Selection in Collection Development: Past, Present and Future”; some are research studies, like Mary Casserly and Anne Ciliberti’s “Collection Management and Integrated Library Systems”, or case studies, like Dan Hazen’s “Cooperative Collection Development: Compelling Theory, Inconsequential Results?” Still others are essays designed to promote emerging, sometimes provocative, models for practice, such as Sheila Intner’s “Integrating the Activities of Librarians and Paraprofessional Workers in Evaluating Academic Library Collections” and Graham Cornish’s “Electronic Document Delivery Services and Their Impact on Collection Management”.

Other chapters include Thomas Nisonger, “The Internet and Collection Management in Academic Libraries: Opportunities and Challenges”; Peggy Johnson, “Collection Development Policies and Electronic Information Resources”; Philip Calvert, “Collection Development and Performance Measurement”; Ross Harvey, “The Preservation of Electronic Records: What Do We Do Next?” Bonita Bryant, “Staffing and Organization for Collection Development in a New Century”; William Fisher and Barbara Leonard, “Budgeting for Information Resources: Current Trends and Future Directions”; Richard J. Wood, “The Axioms, Barriers and Components of Cooperative Collection Development”; and Gay Dannelly, “Cooperation Is the Future of Collection Management and Development: OhioLINK and CIC”.

Though all of the chapters are well documented, Ruth Miller’s “Selected Review of the Literature on Collection Development and Collection Management, 1990‐1995” with its 166 bibliographical endnotes provides excellent detail on further readings. Note 9, for example, lists five titles after the statement, “books like the following serve as useful correctives to the hype about the Information Superhighway and the Internet’s all‐encompassing benefits. Benefits there certainly are, but not without challenges as well” (p. 309). A surprising omission, however, is G. Edward Evans’ Developing Library and Information Center Collections (3rd ed. Libraries Unlimited, 1995), a comprehensive text widely used in North American library schools.

Not a handbook in the conventional usage of the word nor a textbook, the work to some extent searches for unity. Thus the introduction by Gorman and the initial survey chapter by John Budd and Bart Harloe (“Collection Development and Scholarly Communication in the 21st Century: From Collection Management to Content Management”) are essential reading, as they tie the work together and present its rationale. Here one finds that “libraries will be less concerned with the management of artifacts than with the management of intellectual content” (p. x) and that “today collection development is more about access to information than about the quality of information” (p. xv). The posited unifying theme of these chapters is that collection “management is an intellectual activity dependent on individuals’ ability to comprehend what information producers are trying to communicate, to divine the needs and desires of information seekers, and to conjoin the two on the basis of what the mind endeavors to create” ‐ that is, knowledge (p. 15).

This welcome collection of thoroughly indexed essays will be of considerable interest to those responsible for collections in libraries of all kinds, but particularly large research and special libraries and library systems. It has the possibility of crystallising and focusing the discussions that are, or should be, occurring in libraries around the world. Regretfully, its cost will likely prevent its being a widely purchased textbook, but its stimulating chapters will be assigned reading for many students.