The purpose of this study is to review the role of library and its collections in the face of declining resoruces, on the one hand, and improved opportunities for library cooperation, on the other. Must a library own the material its users need, or is...
The purpose of this study is to review the role of library and its collections in the face of declining resoruces, on the one hand, and improved opportunities for library cooperation, on the other. Must a library own the material its users need, or is it enough to provide access to the material?
No library can collect everything its users need or want. Declining budgets (at least in terms of real dollars), rising prices, and increasing volume of publication are affecting large research libraries even more than the smaller academic and public libraries.
There are generally two responses to the crisis in acquisitions : One is to advocate better service, and the other is to foster better cooperation among libraries. Most librarians, of course, would call for both, the difference lying in which one they choose to emphasize.
should a library be a collection or a service point? Most would agree that it should be both, but in what proportion? Several years ago, would-be prophets looked at the growth of national bibliographic utilities and predicted the demise of the cataloger. But, they forgot that someone first had to put the record into the database. It took a shortage of catalogers to point out the folly of this reasoning. I fear the same shortsightedness will infect collection development.
We still need collections, but we must be more mindfull of what we are collecting and how it fits into the vast puzzle of the national collection. Much more attention will be paid to the process of selection, along with continued efforts toward cooperation and the harnessing of technology.