Collection Development and Management

Collection Development and Management Daniel Zager (bio) Does collection development continue to find a place in the work of American academic libraries in the third decade of this century?1 Such a question may seem odd indeed and may trigger the knee-jerk reaction that "of course, libraries continue to add content to support the work of students and faculty." Assuming that is, in fact, the case, by what methods do libraries add to their collections? And is adding to a library collection the same as developing a library collection? Of course, the two activities are not mutually exclusive. We may add materials to our collections as items are requested by students and faculty, such patron-driven acquisitions perhaps taking place in a largely unmediated way facilitated by a library's discovery layer, which may provide this possibility more directly than did the online catalog. The addition of such immediately desired materials may (or may not) be complemented by librarians playing a proactive role in systematic collection development. But that kind of work increasingly is being called into question in academic libraries writ large, which I want to consider broadly before turning specifically to music libraries—most often, constituent units of those larger library entities. In the broader academic library world one detects an antipathy toward the kind of careful item-by-item selection of materials that is characteristic of systematic collection development. Such intensely bibliographic work may be regarded as something of a luxury, requiring subject-specific expertise in various disciplines, and librarian time that is often intentionally redirected to other priorities. Instead, one may see a preference for easier, more efficient vendor-reliant solutions, such as adding new monographic content primarily through subscriptions to large packages of ebooks, or approval plan purchases of print books (e.g., an approval plan providing coverage of newly published English-language titles from North American university presses). Of course, both strategies are useful [End Page 15] and welcome, but if not used in connection with active and watchful collection development will inevitably result in collection gaps that may not be easily remedied in the future. In music collections the issue is more complex, given our unique information formats—scores, and audio and video recordings that bring those scores to sonic life. In the broader academic library world one detects two other trends that may contribute to a declining emphasis on systematic collection development. First, there is increased attention to acquiring the kind of primary source documents that typically are included in special collections units—archival materials and rare books. That is a welcome trend, for expansion and curation of those collections can only enhance the research possibilities so essential for our colleges and universities, particularly in the humanities. But it is important to remember that scholarship involving primary sources works hand in hand with the kinds of secondary materials that are acquired through careful collection development—in music, for example, one thinks of how such primary source documents may be studied in connection with, say, critical editions of scores, thematic catalogs, library catalogs, bibliographies, biographies, and so on. Such sources assist the researcher to interpret primary sources, whether they await initial attention or scholarly reconsideration. Second, one notes increasingly an emphasis on "the library as place," with its call for redefined spaces and "makerspaces," providing new potentials for collaborative learning, manipulation of digital content, and "knowledge creation." As libraries redefine their always limited spaces, collections (or portions of collections) may inevitably be consigned to offsite storage areas, which makes browsing of intellectual content difficult and serendipitous connections among sources nearly impossible. While these current trends in academic libraries, taken together, may contribute to a marginalization of systematic and careful collection development, none of these trends in and of themselves is anything but salutary. Subscriptions to ebook packages often provide great convenience for users, even as titles in such packages may come and go, and as such packages inevitably omit items important to some libraries and their users. Approval plans have long been the librarian's friend in providing automatic receipt of carefully specified categories of new publications. Growing our special collections provides new opportunities for researchers, and rethinking library spaces for the...