Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management. 2nd ed

Peggy Johnson has thoroughly updated her well-written and comprehensive book. The result is an excellent text that covers all aspects of collection development and management. Topics of the chapters include organization and staffing; policy, planning, and budgets; collection development; management of collections; marketing, liaison, and outreach activities; collection analysis, evaluation, and assessment; cooperative collection development; and scholarly communication. The topic of electronic resources, which was its own special chapter in the first edition, is now integrated into all of the chapters. In this way, the book reflects what has happened in libraries in the last few years, as electronic resources have moved from their status as a special consideration to becoming fully integrated into all of collection development work. The chapter on scholarly communication is new, a request from readers of the first edition. Helpful appendixes in the back of the book list professional resources for librarians, sample collection policy and license statements, and a glossary and index. The author appears to have a good grasp of trends in the field of collection development and management. As she notes in an early chapter on staffing, the librarian who does full-time collections work is a vanishing breed. The shift has been toward collections being one of many responsibilities a librarian may have. In some cases, this may indicate automating or even devaluing collections work, with more and more of the decisions being taken out of librarians' hands or librarians being asked to do collections work when they have had no training in the area. In other cases, however, this trend has the positive effect that collections decisions are more informed by librarians' other duties, whether they be technology, reference, or liaison. The other chapters of the book certainly make clear that collections work can be increasingly complex and varied and that collections librarians need to become well versed in many areas. One of the strengths of this book is the author's ability to draw insight from fields outside of librarianship, such as business or economics, in order to bring depth to her discussions. This lifts the book out of the realm of being merely a “how to” guide or a statement of what has been going on in the field to a discussion of more global concepts such as technology's influence on skills, the pros and cons of different organizational models, different planning models, ways to do market research, and methods of evaluation. Seasoned collection development librarians may be familiar with much of the history and details presented in the book but might find ideas they had not considered in some of the more concept-oriented discussions. For that reason, the book should appeal not only to novice collection development librarians and students, but also to those who have experience. The author does market the book as a class text, and, for that, it should continue to be appropriate, as was the first edition. There is quite a lot of detail and specificity that may go over the heads of students who have not yet worked in a library. For instance, it may not mean much to students to read about the differences between OhioLINK and MINITEX Networks or different electronic journal packages, but they should at least be able to get an understanding of the kind of complexity they will likely encounter once they start working in the field. A case study problem is presented at the end of each chapter that would be perfect for library school assignments. These case studies are quite interesting, more “real world” oriented in nature than the typical library school class assignment to simply build a collection of a certain number of titles based on certain criteria. Librarians just starting out in the field of collection development and management will find the details, however, to be informative. Even though the book is meant to be an introduction, it is highly likely that, no matter how long one has been in the field, the book has information about at least one less familiar area. The book is certainly up to date, discussing very current issues such as cancellation of print journals in favor of electronic-only access, the Google Books Library Project, digital preservation, and institutional repositories. Most discussions display an excellent understanding of the current issues, particularly in academic libraries, because the author is an academic librarian. In a few instances, it would have been helpful to include more discussion and more depth. The new chapter on scholarly communication, in particular, does not explain some topics and recent developments as clearly or as thoroughly as could be hoped. Because this book is an overview, perhaps some areas must be covered in more depth in other more specific and focused books. In her preface, the author says that a criticism of her first edition was that it did not equally address the needs of different kinds of libraries outside of academic libraries, her specialty. She has certainly tried to include more references and examples relevant to public and school libraries. While she also claims to have tried to include special libraries, references and details regarding special libraries seem to be the weakest point of the book. Special libraries are mentioned very briefly. It is true that special libraries can vary greatly, so it might be difficult to write something that would cover them as a group. In particular, Journal of the Medical Library Association readers should note that very little mention is made of health sciences libraries, whether academic, hospital, or other. In fact, this reviewer did not expect health sciences libraries to be featured prominently, as this is a general publication from the American Library Association, but found disturbing the lack of mention of the National Library of Medicine in a discussion of resource sharing or the failure to note just how much and why the biomedical science areas have been leaders in the open access movement. Perhaps these are an indication that the author is not familiar with the health sciences. Health sciences–specific resources, such as Doody's Core Titles, are also missing from the otherwise helpful appendix listing selection aids. Nevertheless, this book is recommended for health sciences librarians doing collection development, particularly in academic libraries. It might also be useful for them to supplement this with another book covering health sciences–specific collections concerns.