Regional libraries at least in Russia are in the process of redefining their mission statements and reconsidering collection management approaches. Written collection development statements are widely spread practice, whereas fixed preservation policies are still a rare case on a regional level and, in general, in public, special and university libraries. Again this conclusion is based on my Russian and CIS experience. A second important point is availability of a formal structure responsible for collection management that binds the relationship in the institution. Again geographical diversity leads to diversity in the forms of delegating responsibility for collections management.
Less money intensifies competition for sharing allocated resources between different departments.
In Russia, there are also marks of treating current selection and acquisition and collection preservation as inseparably linked functions. Therefore it is normarly a deputy director who is in charge of making institutional decisions related to collection management. Regrettably, in major Russian federal and regional libraries subject bibliographers, conservators, staff responsible for digitization, microfilming or maintaining collections in reality do not communicate as they should because of structural barriers. The impact of this tradition on collection preservation is not the best one. Very often reporting to different heads hinders communication, badly affects decision making and consequently leads to misuse of avalaible funds and to losses in preservation.