The management of electronic resources is a key issue for all librarians. As one contributor to this volume notes:
There is no question that the full‐scale explosion of electronic information sources has complicated the work of collection development librarians (Gerhard, p. 51).
This applies equally to all library operations, including document supply.
It would help first to clarify the topic under discussion. In her introduction the editor says:
This volume seeks to focus on the variety of approaches and beliefs held by librarians across the country [USA, of course] when it comes to electronic collection management. It has long been my belief that collection development is a cross between an art and a science [my emphases].
I have always understood that collection development and collection management were different disciplines but, since this volume covers aspects of how to both select and acquire electronic material, and what to do with it, there is no need to worry unduly about this distinction.
Before launching into their contributions several of the authors openly admit that there is a surfeit of discussions on the same few themes:
The transition to digitised resources in libraries has been widely discussed at nearly every professional conference and meeting and in the literature for the past decade (Doyle‐Wilch and Tracy, p. 4).
Most readers do indeed already know the basics, and should be prepared to sieve through this and similar volumes to discover the nuggets.
The subject of the volume is almost exclusively electronic journals, rather than other types of electronic resources. This may partly reflect the date of writing, as e‐books have become a hot topic only in the last 18 months. The recurrent themes in these papers are, however, critical to the current debate, and merit the attention devoted to them. They include:
The diminishing importance of traditional collection building, and of selection in acquiring packages of electronic journals. The extreme view is expressed by Peters: “Perhaps all but the largest academic libraries (e.g. the non‐ARL libraries) should simply get out of the collection development business altogether” (p. 149).
The growing importance of unique special collections, when consortia members all have access to the same key material.
The problem of librarians finding the time and developing the expertise, not just to sort out acquisition problems but also to exploit their electronic collections.
The eight individual papers begin with: “Cultivating our garden: the impact of full‐text periodicals on the liberal arts college library”. In this article Barbara Doyle‐Wilch and Carla Tracy argue that libraries can help undergraduates find and use electronic material other than the obvious titles. They also raise the question of whether small, tailored collections are being swamped by mass access to popular material.
David C. Fowler’s excellent piece “Information technology and collection development departments in the academic library: striving to reach a common understanding” is really two articles in one. It first covers the role of IT and the need for close liaison between collections and technical staff; and then argues persuasively for an electronic resources co‐ordinator post. Both issues are of practical value, and are discussed in an informative way.
Marina Oliver in her “SPARC: an alternative lifestyle for academic libraries” provides a clear overview of this alternative publishing model up to the end of 1999.
Virginia Baldwin in “Collection development in the new millennium: evaluating, selecting, annotating, organising for ease of access, re‐evaluating, and updating electronic resources” claims that the key question is how to organise electronic material for library patrons. Baldwin’s article largely comprises 30 historical and descriptive pages on tracking new electronic resources.
A similar idea appears in “Collection development and organisation of electronic resources” by Gerald L. Newman, who looks at the impact of organising electronic resources, rather than selection or acquisition. Newman contends that access is easier through Web pages than via library catalogues.
The impact on subject librarians of the burgeoning e‐material and the implications for collection management are the subject of Kristin H. Gerhard’s “Challenges in electronic collection building in interdisciplinary studies”. Gerhard emphasises the need for flexibility in view of the trend towards interdisciplinary research.
In William J. Gibbs’s “Distance learning and the opportunities and challenges for libraries” we learn that electronic resources can effectively bolster virtual coursework for distance learners. Content is as vital as the improved communication channels.
Finally, Thomas Peters poses “Some issues for collection developers and content managers”. Many of the views stated are deliberately provocative, for example:
The business of collection development librarians is not building collections, but providing academic information to specific individuals and groups within a defined population of potential users (p. 140).
Collection development librarians no longer will need to worry about the user interface … each individual user, whether wittingly or unwittingly, will design his or her own online information environment (p. 145).
Other statements by Peters pose genuine dilemmas in a thought‐provoking way, for example:
Why should a library or an individual purchase up front the entire published proceedings of a conference, when only a few papers are of interest? (p. 142).
These ideas make a refreshing change from the more descriptive papers.
Finally, I note below some bibliographic niceties that are typical of Haworth publications.
This work is co‐published. It is identical to Vol. 28 Nos 1/2 of the journal Collection Management, so librarians should beware of inadvertent duplication. Being published as a monograph some months after its appearance as a journal issue, it comes ready‐supplied with its own mini‐reviews. These endorsements equate to blurbs on the back of a paperback, but are somewhat late for those librarians who have just bought the book.
The book is rather coy about its date of publication. The accompanying flyer gives 2001, but the text is identical to that of the 2000 journal issue, and according to the title page the two were “co‐published simultaneously.” No article includes references from 2000, so I presume that the texts were written in 1999.
Another oddity is that affiliation and places of work are not provided for any of the authors. Surely this is relevant information for placing the contributions in context? “About the Editor”, by contrast, is almost as long as the Editor’s Introduction, which takes up a mere 12 lines.
An index is provided, but unfortunately it does not bear close scrutiny. What are we to make of entries such as the following, when a large proportion of the book is about these subjects:
Licensing 33, 150
or:
User Control 145?
And what use is:
Technical issues 33‐35?
The index can best be used to locate proper names.
To sum up: this is a mixed collection of pieces on issues associated with electronic resources. As with all such compilations the quality of papers is variable, but the volume is worth seeking out, particularly for the well‐written and instructive articles by Fowler, Gerhard and Baldwin. The most informative elements are the real‐life examples, even though some, such as the SPARC paper, will need to be updated from other sources. This volume contains some interesting things, but also much that is familiar.
