The publication of the fifth edition of this well‐established text triggers several responses. First of all, it is good to see its reappearance, with a fresh face, especially at such a competitive price (for both hardback and paperback) and we know that high sales keep this steady‐seller so. The earlier, fourth, edition responded wisely to extensive feedback from users and beefed up sections on the internet and electronic policy, consortia and other things. This new, fifth, edition has done the same, making changes to serials (collapsing print and electronic into one chapter), rewriting chapters on e‐materials and government information, audio‐visual and resource sharing, recasting the introductory chapter on the information age, and generally sharpening and updating.
With the fifth edition, too, comes a CD, where readers can find a file on all the websites cited in the text, chapter by chapter, and these work efficiently. You can go to Electronic Collection Policies at: www.library.yale.edu, explore university library policies, and at Yale itself inspect things like “Checklists for Evaluation”. At www.biomedcentral.com, there is access to 150 peer‐reviewed open access journals, at www.sunhawk.com (from July 2006 FreeHandMusic.com) access digital sheet music downloads, and pursue inquiries under resource sharing at OhioLink and the Center for Research Libraries and elsewhere. Coverage of websites associated with preservation and conservation is good. At the website of the publisher Libraries Unlimited itself, at: www.lu.com/dlc5/, readers can find this same website information, though obviously unrelated to the book unless they buy it as well.
What is on the rest of the CD will be discussed below. But, turning to the second response, what we have with the fifth edition, as with earlier ones, is a very useful textbook for use wherever information and library studies are taught. This applies above all at pre‐experience level and often for CPD purposes as well. Many of the chapters will, indeed, be remembered by experienced professionals as being introduced to them when they were students themselves. So information needs assessment (Chapter 2), collection development policies (Chapter 3), the selection process (Chapter 4), acquisition (Chapter 10), deselection (Chapter 13), and evaluation (Chapter 14) follow familiar lines, defining terms, providing principles, opening up discussion, citing examples in different types of service. Most examples throughout are US examples, but the points are made nevertheless. Sprinkled throughout in this new edition – printed in the text (references follow every chapter and are often interpolated too) as well as on the CD. This is clear recommended reading and short‐loan or reserve territory, and we have all been there.
Keeping a well‐recognized text up‐to‐date is both a pleasure and a chore. There are times when Homer nods, as where resource sharing (Chapter 15) is much the same though redeemed by new references to websites, where a struggle has clearly taken place to update government information (Chapter 8)(with its hostage to fortune that things are different since 9/11 but how?), with only one substantial example of institutional repositories (MIT DSpace) in a discussion of e‐materials (Chapter 7), and a continuingly awkward sidelong glance at publishers (Chapter 5). Fiscal management (Chapter 12) needs shaking up a bit, even though it supplies much‐needed examples of cost analysis and setting aside.
That said, there are lots of sensible and realistic comments about distributors and vendors (Chapters 6 and 11), empathy with new practitioners keen to get quick advice about what to avoid in resource sharing (Chapter 15), sound things about copyright and licensing (in chapter 17 on legal issues), attention to all kinds of libraries in the selection process (Chapter 4), the need not just to gather user information but interpret it as well (Chapter 2 on information needs assessment) and a useful framework of criteria for evaluating e‐resources (in Chapter 14 on evaluation).
Whenever a mainstream text like this appears, disputes arise about what should be included in it, and even librarians, the most rational of humankind, beg to differ. Putting personal preference to one side, we can turn to a third response. The issue really is changing times, changing content. Evans (Associate Academic Vice‐President for Information Resources, Von der Ahe Library, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles) and Saponaro (Manager of Staff Learning and Development, University of Maryland Libraries) have been right to include a CD with this text, though what is on it is not uncontroversial.
There are ten files on the CD, the first of which consists of websites associated with the printed text. The others connect up with particular chapters, with mixed success. For Chapter 2 there are maps linked to a community analysis exercise (Chapter 2 is on information needs assessment), for chapter 8 information on bibliographic control for government information is provided, for Chapter 13 (on deselection) there is an excursion into records management, and for Chapter 15 (on resource sharing) cooperative, institutional and legal issues are discussed).
All very useful and valid supplementary material. A file on “Selection Process Theory” is also provided, with a historiographic journey from McColvin through Ranganathan and Spiller to Wortman on selection principles, and grids comparing what they all said). This is more useful information, and not just memory‐lane. But the communication models associated with Chapter 1 (on the information age society), drawn from the 4th edition, could be safely buried, the information about publisher developments adds little to Chapter 5 on producers of information material (itself seeking integration), and the parenthetical discussion of bibliotherapy on the CD for Chapter 18 (on censorship and intellectual freedom) is eccentric (dragged into a discussion of freedom to read). In the main text itself, in Chapter 18, the historical aspects of censorship are of far less interest (and more suited to a specialist text) than what is happening now (even though filtering and children under “decency” law gets an airing).
Of particular value – shining out – are comments on the value‐addedness of vendors (in Chapter 11), and, for a possible sixth edition, it would be really good to see a shake‐up of the whole collection policy development theme so that finance gets moved to centre‐stage. Something, too, on staffing in this field, since it is rather taken as read that there will be staff there to do it all. The final audit of this new edition, then, is that we are all glad it is there but, like typical family members, we find ourselves picking holes in it. It is because we want it to be even better. By the way, because it is “American”, that does not make it insular – the issues raised travel around the world. For any library and training programme where information studies are seriously taught and where collection development or management (the authors say they mean the same thing) is the focus of attention.
