Collecting in Archives and Libraries


Supporting Digital Scholarship Policy Committee


Charlottesville: Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities
©2000
Last revised: June 5, 2001





Table of Contents

Traditional

Discovery
Selection
Acquiring
Preserving
Description, Access, and Control
Deselecting

Digital

Discovery
Selection


Collecting in Archives and Libraries

I. Traditional

A. Discovery

1. Serendipity

2. Publishers lists

3. Approval plans

4. Reviews

5. Publisher announcements

6. User requests

7. Journal “books received lists”

8. Conferences and publishers exhibits

9. Publisher direct mail solicting

B. Selection

1. Evaluation and selection criteria
a) Overall intellectual value

b) Long versus short term value

c) Usability

d) Value/cost ratio

e) Value/teach & research ratio

f) Value/context-collection area strength ratio

g) Anticipated number of users

h) Anticipated use

Examples: dissertation writing, classes, or programmatic changes

i) User authority or influence

2. Methods
a) Cooperative collection development agreements

b) Publisher reputation

c) Vendor profiles and approval plans

d) Purchase recommendation—faculty, student, and staff

e) Use patterns

f) Demand

g) Individual selector judgement

C. Acquiring

1. Types of Acquisition
a) Ownership of materials
(1) Purchase

(2) Gift (unrestricted)

(3) Subscribe

b) Conditional Acquisition
(1) Leasing

(2) Gift (restricted)

(3) Licensing

2. Acquisition Sources
a) Trade Publishers

b) Vanity Publishers

c) University Presses

d) Self Published

e) Professional Societies

f) Government Publications

g) Non-government Organizations

h) Donors

i) Vendors

j) Dealers

D. Preserving

1. Decision Criteria
a) Enduring or Long-term Preservation
(1) Artifactual Value

(2) Content/Intellectual Value

(3) Anticipated Use

(4) Uniqueness

b) Short-term Preservation

Example: anticipated heavy use of material of short-term value.

2. Timing of Preservation Activities
a) Pre-acquisition

Example: purchase hardbound rather than softbound

b) Post-acquisition

Example: have it bound

c) Mid-life Intervention

Example: Low to moderate use turns into heavy use which endangers the item.

E. Description, Access, and Control

1. Cataloging
a) Levels of Cataloging
(1) Breadth of Description
(a) Brief cataloging

(b) Full cataloging

(2) Depth of Content Analysis
(a) Top Level

Examples: Analyze at the book or journal level (typical)

(b) Detailed Content

Examples: Book table of contents (common for books if freely available; rare if cataloger supplied) or journal article analysis (supplied external to cataloging in A&I databases and publications.)

2. Methods
a) Original

b) Copy

c) Outsourcing

d) Vendor Supplied

3. Decision Criteria
a) Economic

b) Anticipated Use

c) Intellectual or Artifactual Value

d) On Demand

e) Temporary

Example: Temporary description for managing acquisition processing activities or interim access, when more detailed cataloging anticipated through means other than original.

4. Access and Use Control
a) Physical Access

Conditions can be general, such as copyright and fair use; or specific to individual materials base on individual contracts and agreements; or based on practical issues of demand and availability.

(1) User

Example: faculty and graduate student acess, but not undergraduates

(2) Time

Example: Two-hour limit for material used in a class to ensure that all students have access.

(3) Location

Example: use restricted to Special Collections reading room.

(4) Fee Based

Example: Free to university community; commericial access fee based.

b) Intellectual Access and Use (Copyright)

Example: physical access permitted, right to quote by permission of copyright holder; or “fair use” restrictions

F. Deselecting

1. Deselection Criteria

a) Low use

b) Time-based information: Superseded

For example: Books-in-Print

c) Incompleteness

For example: library has only one volume of ten published

d) Deteriorated or Damaged

Deterioration or damage makes the item unusable.

e) Multiple Copies

For example: Multiple copies purchased for use in class and the class is no longer offered.

f) Other Format Available

2. Methods

a) Surplus or Resale

b) Donation to Other Repositories

c) Recycling

d) Exchange or trade

II. Digital

A. Discovery

1. Serendipity

Perhaps increase in serendipity as digital discovery becomes more systematic.

2. Publishers lists

3. Approval plans

4. Reviews

Some reviews are print, though many are only digital, such as Librarians index to the Internet and the Scout report.

5. Publisher announcements

6. User requests

7. Journal “books received lists”

8. Conferences and publishers exhibits

9. Publisher direct mail solicting

B. Selection

1. Evaluation and selection criteria
a) Overall intellectual value

b) Long versus short term value

c) Usability

Usability becomes much more complex for digital materials, as hardware and software availability, ability to network, and proprietary versus standard representations all become factors..

d) Value/cost ratio

e) Value/teach & research ratio

f) Value/context-collection area strength ratio

g) Anticipated number of users

h) Anticipated use

Examples: dissertation writing, classes, or programmatic changes

i) User authority or influence

2. Methods
a) Cooperative collection development agreements

b) Publisher reputation

c) Vendor profiles and approval plans

d) Purchase recommendation—faculty, student, and staff

e) Use patterns

f) Demand

g) Individual selector judgement