Editorial
Article Type: Editorial From: Collection Building, Volume 29, Issue 1
Recently I saw an advertisement for a Collection Development position in an academic library. I was impressed with the list of qualifications needed for this position which included the following:
experience in collection assessment including quantitative analysis;
experience as a liaison librarian;
experience with an acquisitions module of an integrated library system;
experience negotiating and acquiring electronic resources;
experience with spreadsheets and databases; and
strong analytical and organizational skills.
This is definitely a different list of required qualifications than one would have seen even ten years ago when we still thought that the ability to do selection was one of the primary qualifications of someone in collection development. Now collection development is a much more complex job requiring many skills. Selection is often far down on the list since there is less and less title by title especially in academic libraries and mostly librarians involved with setting up approval plans with materials being selected by a vendor. If title by title selection is done, it is usually done online to provide for more efficiency.
Collection assessment has taken hold as a very important part of collection development allowing libraries to examine their holdings both from a qualitative and quantitative point of view. The methods range from collection profiling and list checking to circulation studies, user surveys and focus groups allowing libraries to analyze their collections or to compare them with comparable libraries. The role of liaison librarian both allows the librarian to better understand the priority of a particular academic department and to make them more aware of the materials available to faculty and students. This is particularly true of electronic resources that might be missed by the users who need them. Of course, the dominating factor here is the electronic resources. They have changed our way of doing business. Because of their expense librarians must evaluate them more carefully and then successfully negotiate a contract that meets the library’s needs. The requirement about the spreadsheets and databases shows that collection development is both quantitative and qualitative. Librarians must both evaluate the quality of materials they plan to acquire and must document their decisions using quantitative measurements as well as qualitative ones. Finally although not in the requirement for the position the description mentions that the person who is in charge of collection development must manage the budget allocation and the budget. In an academic library this can be a challenging task as the librarian develops a way to distribute the funds fairly among the various departments in the university even if they are not the primary selectors. We must all reflect on this new world of collection development which utilizes a wide breadth of knowledge and skills and challenges us in many new ways.
Kay Ann Cassell
