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Collection development policies: The case for
Library Acquisitions: Practice and Theory, Vol. 8, pp. 43-45, 1984 Printed in the USA. All rights reserved.
0364-6408/84 $3.00 + .OO Copyright @ 1984 Pergamon Press Ltd
AC UlSIT_IONS ROUNDTABLE COLLECTION D & VELOPMENT POLICIES: PRO AND CON
COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICIES: THE CASE FOR ERIC J. CARPENTER Collection Development
Librarian
Oberlin College Library Oberlin, OH 44074
“Why should I spend my precious time drafting another policy statement?” mutters the hardpressed Ohio academic librarian in 1983. “Especially one that is apt to stir up faculty members? Writing a collection development policy is a waste of time! I have too many other pressing commitments. Both our library staff and the acquisitions budget have been cut. Besides, it’ll get the faculty ‘involved’ in library matters, ‘stirred up,’ and asking questions such as ‘Why is the book budget for my department so small?‘” Such questions are not doubt on the minds of at least some academic librarians in Ohio in 1983-perhaps even a few at this conference. My reply to such questions begins with a simple assertion-You can’t afford not to! You can’t afford not to have written collection development policy statements in the 1980s. Collection development policies serve three major functions that are necessary for any library attempting to build collections in a rational manner. Collection development policies serve as: planning documents, tools for communication, and a basis for resource sharing with other libraries. An academic library cannot have a program of collection development without eventually completing a written policy statement. James Baughman asserts that collection development consists of three essential elements: planning, implementation, and evaluation [ 1I. Without these a library is engaged only in acxptiring-spending money and adding books-not in rationally and systematically developing its collection. Writing a collection development policy compels the Editor’s Note: The two papers composing this issue’s Acquisitions Roundruble were originally presented on October 7, 1983 at the Annual Conference of the Academic Library Association of Ohio.
43
44
ERlC J. CARPENTER
librarian to develop a rationale, a plan for acquiring materials-to ask, What is the library acquiring, and why? What is the mission of our college/university and library, and what materials will the library acquire to support that mission? These questions should be answered in a written policy stating the institution’s mission and describing each academic program supported by the library. Library materials to be acquired in support of these programs should be described by subject, format, and language in accordance with ALA’s Guidelines for Collection Development 121. A written collection development policy also provides a basis for rational planning and allocation of the acquisitions budget. It helps establish priorities for the allocation of resources to support specific stated needs. In lean fiscal years, the policy states collecting priorities that must be supported at all cost. In rare years of plenty, the policy specifies the collection areas that should receive priority if any unexpected gifts or grants happen to become available for materials purchases. Collection development policies also serve as communications tools. Paul Mosher states that collection development is a process that “should constitute a rational, documented program guided by written policies and protocols and should reflect, in a sense, a contract between library users and library staff as to what will be acquired, for whom, and at what level 131.” Our patrons should know what we are buying and why. A collection development policy permits a library to address several audiences. In the academic library, faculty and students are the most important audience-the users with whom we make the contract to collect materials. Preparing a policy for collecting in an academic library requires consultation with faculty members (and perhaps students) to develop policies and set priorities. Such librarian/faculty communication should be an ongoing process. If it is not, the preparation of a collection development policy can be the occasion for beginning such a dialogue. Faculty and library staff engaged in book selection are another important audience. For them, particularly for new bibliographers, the selection policy serves as a training document that guides their daily activity in selection, collection evaluation, and weeding. Library administrators are another audience. “What are those acquisitions librarians/ bibliographers doing with all the acquisitions dollars?” ask library directors. The Policy supplies a ready answer to them, as it does to university or college administrators, deans, or provosts who ask the same question of the library annually when the budget is prepared. Speaking at the Pilot Collection Management and Development Institute at Stanford in 1981, Raymond Bacchetti, Vice Provost of Stanford University, warned librarians to “approach budgeting with responsible alternate forms and levels of programs and service so that the definition of collection development remains in professional hands.” In other words, Bacchetti warned the audience, “You define what can be delivered at certain levels of expenditure and identify the consequences of those alternatives. This provides substance to the budget process and forces attention to the issues as you define them, not as someone defines them for you.“[4] Having a written collection development policy permits the academic librarian to work effectively with provosts as astute as Bacchetti. The final audience for a collection development policy consists of a library’s consortia partners, other libraries with which one attempts to share resources. Guideline 1.3 in Guidelines for Collection Development states the matter clearly: “Widespread budgetary constraints and the growth of interlibrary cooperation for shared resources and service networks have given impetus to the pressure to analyze collection activity in universally comprehensible terms 151.” The Guidelines provide a tool for documenting and comparing collection strengths and buying patterns and overlaps among consortia members. Oberlin is a member of the Northeast Ohio Major Academic Libraries (NEOMAL) consortium. In 1981 NEOMAL conducted a buying
Collection
Development
Policies: The Case For
45
overlap study using the LC Classl~cation: National Sheljlist Count breakdown in the Guidelines. Our objective was to discover if we could develop a resource sharing agreement to eliminate unnecessary duplication. We learned a good deal about each other’s collections even though we eventually came to the conclusion that because of pressing local needs there was little we could do to prevent duplication of essential titles by member libraries. What NEOMAL tried to do was develop a conspectus similar to that originally developed by RLG libraries and described by Nancy Gwinn and Paul Mosher in an excellent article recently published. They define conspectus as a “breakdown of subject fields in such a way as to allow distributed collection responsibilities for as many fields as possible 161.” RLG has developed a conspectus based on the combined collection development policies of member libraries. It is an overview, or summary, arranged by subject, of existing collection strengths and future collecting intensities of RLG members. This summary has been developed into a database that is part of the RLIN system. The Association of Research Libraries is currently exploring the possibility of using the RLG format to develop a nationwide collection development policy or conspectus. The development of this valuable tool was made possible only because each member library devoted the necessary energy to writing a policy based on local needs. While the individual patron in an academic librarymay know nothing about the RLG conspectus, he or she is vitally concerned about one question, “Will my library have the book 1 want on the shelf when I need it?” If that person’s library has a collection development policy statement, the patron is more likely to be able to answer the question, “Yes, there’s the book 1 want, and I found it just in time to read for that paper 1 have to finish tonight and hand in tomorrow.”
REFERENCES I. Baughman, James C. “Toward a Structural Approach to Collection Development,” College and Research Libraries, 38 (May, 1977). 242. 2. Guidelinesfor Collection Developmenr. ed. David Perkins. Chicago: American Library Association, 1979. 3. Mosher, Paul H. “Fighting Back: From Growth to Management in Academic Library Collection Development,” a paper delivered at the Pilot Collection Management and Development Institute at Stanford University, July 6-10,4. 4. Bacchetti. Raymond F. “Reason, Politics, and Collection Development,” a paper delivered at the Pilot Collection Management and Development Institute at Stanford University, July 6-10, 1981.4. 5. Guidelines for Collection Development. I. 6. Gwinn, Nancy E. and Paul H. Mosher. “Coordinating Collection Development: The RLG Conspectus,” College and Research Libraries, 44 (March 1983). I3 I.
0364-6408/84 $3.00 + .OO Copyright @ 1984 Pergamon Press Ltd
AC UlSIT_IONS ROUNDTABLE COLLECTION D & VELOPMENT POLICIES: PRO AND CON
COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICIES: THE CASE FOR ERIC J. CARPENTER Collection Development
Librarian
Oberlin College Library Oberlin, OH 44074
“Why should I spend my precious time drafting another policy statement?” mutters the hardpressed Ohio academic librarian in 1983. “Especially one that is apt to stir up faculty members? Writing a collection development policy is a waste of time! I have too many other pressing commitments. Both our library staff and the acquisitions budget have been cut. Besides, it’ll get the faculty ‘involved’ in library matters, ‘stirred up,’ and asking questions such as ‘Why is the book budget for my department so small?‘” Such questions are not doubt on the minds of at least some academic librarians in Ohio in 1983-perhaps even a few at this conference. My reply to such questions begins with a simple assertion-You can’t afford not to! You can’t afford not to have written collection development policy statements in the 1980s. Collection development policies serve three major functions that are necessary for any library attempting to build collections in a rational manner. Collection development policies serve as: planning documents, tools for communication, and a basis for resource sharing with other libraries. An academic library cannot have a program of collection development without eventually completing a written policy statement. James Baughman asserts that collection development consists of three essential elements: planning, implementation, and evaluation [ 1I. Without these a library is engaged only in acxptiring-spending money and adding books-not in rationally and systematically developing its collection. Writing a collection development policy compels the Editor’s Note: The two papers composing this issue’s Acquisitions Roundruble were originally presented on October 7, 1983 at the Annual Conference of the Academic Library Association of Ohio.
43
44
ERlC J. CARPENTER
librarian to develop a rationale, a plan for acquiring materials-to ask, What is the library acquiring, and why? What is the mission of our college/university and library, and what materials will the library acquire to support that mission? These questions should be answered in a written policy stating the institution’s mission and describing each academic program supported by the library. Library materials to be acquired in support of these programs should be described by subject, format, and language in accordance with ALA’s Guidelines for Collection Development 121. A written collection development policy also provides a basis for rational planning and allocation of the acquisitions budget. It helps establish priorities for the allocation of resources to support specific stated needs. In lean fiscal years, the policy states collecting priorities that must be supported at all cost. In rare years of plenty, the policy specifies the collection areas that should receive priority if any unexpected gifts or grants happen to become available for materials purchases. Collection development policies also serve as communications tools. Paul Mosher states that collection development is a process that “should constitute a rational, documented program guided by written policies and protocols and should reflect, in a sense, a contract between library users and library staff as to what will be acquired, for whom, and at what level 131.” Our patrons should know what we are buying and why. A collection development policy permits a library to address several audiences. In the academic library, faculty and students are the most important audience-the users with whom we make the contract to collect materials. Preparing a policy for collecting in an academic library requires consultation with faculty members (and perhaps students) to develop policies and set priorities. Such librarian/faculty communication should be an ongoing process. If it is not, the preparation of a collection development policy can be the occasion for beginning such a dialogue. Faculty and library staff engaged in book selection are another important audience. For them, particularly for new bibliographers, the selection policy serves as a training document that guides their daily activity in selection, collection evaluation, and weeding. Library administrators are another audience. “What are those acquisitions librarians/ bibliographers doing with all the acquisitions dollars?” ask library directors. The Policy supplies a ready answer to them, as it does to university or college administrators, deans, or provosts who ask the same question of the library annually when the budget is prepared. Speaking at the Pilot Collection Management and Development Institute at Stanford in 1981, Raymond Bacchetti, Vice Provost of Stanford University, warned librarians to “approach budgeting with responsible alternate forms and levels of programs and service so that the definition of collection development remains in professional hands.” In other words, Bacchetti warned the audience, “You define what can be delivered at certain levels of expenditure and identify the consequences of those alternatives. This provides substance to the budget process and forces attention to the issues as you define them, not as someone defines them for you.“[4] Having a written collection development policy permits the academic librarian to work effectively with provosts as astute as Bacchetti. The final audience for a collection development policy consists of a library’s consortia partners, other libraries with which one attempts to share resources. Guideline 1.3 in Guidelines for Collection Development states the matter clearly: “Widespread budgetary constraints and the growth of interlibrary cooperation for shared resources and service networks have given impetus to the pressure to analyze collection activity in universally comprehensible terms 151.” The Guidelines provide a tool for documenting and comparing collection strengths and buying patterns and overlaps among consortia members. Oberlin is a member of the Northeast Ohio Major Academic Libraries (NEOMAL) consortium. In 1981 NEOMAL conducted a buying
Collection
Development
Policies: The Case For
45
overlap study using the LC Classl~cation: National Sheljlist Count breakdown in the Guidelines. Our objective was to discover if we could develop a resource sharing agreement to eliminate unnecessary duplication. We learned a good deal about each other’s collections even though we eventually came to the conclusion that because of pressing local needs there was little we could do to prevent duplication of essential titles by member libraries. What NEOMAL tried to do was develop a conspectus similar to that originally developed by RLG libraries and described by Nancy Gwinn and Paul Mosher in an excellent article recently published. They define conspectus as a “breakdown of subject fields in such a way as to allow distributed collection responsibilities for as many fields as possible 161.” RLG has developed a conspectus based on the combined collection development policies of member libraries. It is an overview, or summary, arranged by subject, of existing collection strengths and future collecting intensities of RLG members. This summary has been developed into a database that is part of the RLIN system. The Association of Research Libraries is currently exploring the possibility of using the RLG format to develop a nationwide collection development policy or conspectus. The development of this valuable tool was made possible only because each member library devoted the necessary energy to writing a policy based on local needs. While the individual patron in an academic librarymay know nothing about the RLG conspectus, he or she is vitally concerned about one question, “Will my library have the book 1 want on the shelf when I need it?” If that person’s library has a collection development policy statement, the patron is more likely to be able to answer the question, “Yes, there’s the book 1 want, and I found it just in time to read for that paper 1 have to finish tonight and hand in tomorrow.”
REFERENCES I. Baughman, James C. “Toward a Structural Approach to Collection Development,” College and Research Libraries, 38 (May, 1977). 242. 2. Guidelinesfor Collection Developmenr. ed. David Perkins. Chicago: American Library Association, 1979. 3. Mosher, Paul H. “Fighting Back: From Growth to Management in Academic Library Collection Development,” a paper delivered at the Pilot Collection Management and Development Institute at Stanford University, July 6-10,4. 4. Bacchetti. Raymond F. “Reason, Politics, and Collection Development,” a paper delivered at the Pilot Collection Management and Development Institute at Stanford University, July 6-10, 1981.4. 5. Guidelines for Collection Development. I. 6. Gwinn, Nancy E. and Paul H. Mosher. “Coordinating Collection Development: The RLG Conspectus,” College and Research Libraries, 44 (March 1983). I3 I.