Editorial

Citation

Cassell, K.A. (2009), "Editorial", Collection Building, Vol. 28 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/cb.2009.17128daa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Collection Building, Volume 28, Issue 4

Collection development continues to change as a result of the need to work more economically and the need to better meet user needs and interests. Academic libraries are purchasing less print materials and more e-books. This, of course, allows users to locate and read materials without actually visiting a library. The change to e-books is quite interesting. Some libraries are placing the bibliographic records for all e-books from one or more vendors in the catalog but only paying for the ones that are actually selected and used by their users. This is part of the new trend of acquiring materials that users actually want rather than acquiring titles that users may want. This trend extends to print materials as well. Academic libraries are ordering books requested by users sometimes using Amazon for quicker service. Since statistics show that many books selected by academic librarians are never borrowed, buying a book requested by a user at least guarantees one use of the book. In this new user-dominated market fewer books in academic libraries will be selected by librarians and more will be added to the collection at the request of users.

Public libraries are also changing their collection development practices. Libraries with branches usually centralize their ordering which is more economical requiring less personnel and enabling the libraries to receive their materials quicker and often processed and shelf ready. Some of the title by title ordering has given way to standing orders for areas where library ordering is fairly routine such as test books and travel book series. Public libraries work closely with vendors to help them to acquire new and popular titles with a minimum of effort. Centralized ordering allows library staff to concentrate on other aspects of collection development. They can spend time weeding collections and finding out what users really want based on circulation information. E-books are also being acquired by public libraries although they are not usually a replacement for print materials that are still much in demand.

All librarians are not comfortable with this major shift in ordering priorities. Only time will tell how this new way of doing business will work and what kind of collections will result. But it is obvious that user driven collections are important now and will be in the immediate future.

Kay Ann Cassell