Introduction

In order to get a sense of what is at stake in the necessary stewardship and curation of collections, one can simply look at what is valued today. We often look to history to help us learn, grow and avoid repeating mistakes. How do we do this? We do this by consulting materials that have been passed down from age to age. The research process is one that builds on what has come before it. This process relies on the availability of content from all areas of life. These initially raw materials have been gathered, collected and preserved: they have been stewarded. It is largely due to this stewardship practice that they have survived till today. Granted, some element of serendipity has been involved in determining what survives across time but more importantly, there is human intervention. We create repositories and archives to properly house these materials. We describe and arrange these materials so that we know what we store. These activities can be described as stewardship and curation. All the traditional skills used to preserve content now apply equally – and perhaps one could argue to an even greater degree – to digital materials. If we are to avoid Terry Kuny's ‘digital dark age’ (Kuny, 1997) then we need to apply the same attention to digital materials as we do to physical ones. Therefore digital stewardship and digital curation pay homage to our efforts to preserve physical materials as well as guiding us in what we need to do for digital content.

To be successful in digital curation in the 21st century one must understand the environment in which one works. This is perhaps the most difficult information to gather and understand. Knowing what your area of influence relies upon: what are the internal and external dependencies is critical to achieving success. Therefore any strategic plan needs to be based in a form of practical reality – tied to what is actually achievable given the environment and resources at hand. As will be discussed later in more detail, it is often the responsibility of individual curators (in this sense) to paint a picture for policy makers and administrators of what is needed for the proper stewardship of library materials. Learning what the issues are and how they will affect your mission is your main goal. You must ascertain a sense of the big picture.

The Digital Age has brought us opportunities and challenges. Most library services face attacks from those who believe that we are no longer needed as ‘everything is on the internet’. We face challenges from governments who in the light of economic uncertainty fail to see value in public libraries. We face challenges from students whose fee regimes imbue them with entitlement aggression about what a library can and should do for them.

Yet we know that our work in developing collections is important to preserve the past, support the present and plan for the future. Our fundamental responsibilities in collection development have not changed, but our methods have.

One hundred years ago in 1911 the British Library of Political Science (now the LSE Library) reported that in six months it had received and made available 29,287 books; a rate which the Librarian noted was twice that of the British Museum (now the British Library). In those times the Librarian would go out and search for materials. Sidney and Beatrice Webb came back from the USA laden with library materials, an agreement to an exchange of publications with Columbia University and a dislike of ice cream.

Building the collection was paramount, but despite vaulting ambitions no collection could ever cover everything. It was probably never possible, even in ancient Nineveh to bring together all recorded knowledge. We cannot hope to do this in the 21st century, but we do need to develop clear policies on what we will collect and maintain for future generations. Collections on library shelves or in remote physical storage must now be mirrored by storage and preservation of the digital. We must make policy in consultation with those we serve but also have an eye to the future. It may sometimes seem like a thankless task but future generations will thank us. Equally we must decide when we need to do the procuring and when we can pass basic work to others. Finally, and this horrifies some library users, we need to know how to weed out unwanted stock.

This book stands on the shoulders of previous texts, notably Jenkins and Morley's Collection Management in Academic Libraries (second edition 1999) and Clayton and Gorman's Managing Information Resources in Libraries: collection management in theory and practice (2001).

Introduction

The concept of collection development is central to the professional practice of librarianship, since the whole notion of a library is fundamentally associated with the idea of a collection, to the extent that the words ‘library’ and ‘collection’ are almost synonymous. Other terms such as ‘information centre’ ‘learning centre’ or ‘discovery centre’ are often used now instead of ‘library’ and terms such as ‘information resources’ may be substituted for ‘library collections’. However, the activities and processes traditionally associated with collection development are still essential to the effective functioning of contemporary library information, learning and knowledge services, even though they may look and feel quite different to their historical counterparts. Our concern here is to explore the concept of collection development in the digital library and information environment and in particular to examine how thinking and practice in this vital area of library and information management have developed and changed in response to advances in digital technologies. What are the similarities and differences between collection development yesterday and today? Investigating such questions should help to prepare us for dealing with the collections of tomorrow.

The chapter therefore starts by examining a few definitions of the library as a collection to demonstrate the centrality of collection development to library and information professionals. Next, it moves on to the more problematic issue of collection development as a concept, showing how professional discourse on the subject has suffered from confused terminology. It then uses a convenient four-phase framework to review the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) on libraries, concentrating on its effects on collections and their development. The final part of the chapter returns to academic and practitioner conceptions of collection development in digital environments, concluding with a set of questions for reflection on the future of collection development.

The library as a collection

Dictionaries, glossaries, encyclopedias and other reference works within and beyond our professional field generally define a library primarily as a collection (of books and other materials) and rarely mention services in their definitions, or only as a supporting element. The focus on the collection as the defining characteristic of a library has continued into the digital age.

Introduction

The scholarly publishing industry has witnessed considerable pressures to change during the past decade – for it to adapt to the many external developments which make dissemination of education and scholarship more relevant in an age in which authors and researchers are coming to terms with the potentials offered by the internet, by new forms of social collaboration and by new needs for information in different formats, amongst others.

One such change is in the business models which are becoming more relevant as external developments find traction within scholarship. One of the key drivers for change is that many of the external pressures are geared around ‘openness’. The open source initiatives within the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry at large are influencing the needs and requirements of academics and researchers – there is a growing support for openness, transparency, interactivity and free access within and between the constituents or traditional stakeholders of the scholarly information industry. These are new and are at odds with some of the traditions governing scholarly communication in the past.

Open source initiatives have manifest themselves in the rise of so-called ‘open access’ (OA). This latter is not a single or even unified movement. There are a number of routes being considered for open access, as explored later in this chapter, and it is a reflection of the novelty of this development that the various routes are not always operating in harmony.

The net effect, nevertheless, is that a growing portion of scholarly, formally published literature is appearing as open access. Instead of librarians having to pay to access the results of research work, the ‘toll-based’ access system (TA), some 20% of the formal published literature, is now available for free to the library (OA). This has the potential to change the acquisitions budget of libraries considerably. It also has the potential to change the functions performed within the library to support and accommodate open access.

Knowledge workers

Why is open access so important? It faces up to the need to reach beyond the research library's clientele, into the professional, small and medium enterprise (SME) and ‘amateur scientist’ communities which have hitherto been denied access because of the prevailing toll-based subscription system. These communities have been largely excluded from the research results generated behind academic garden walls.

Introduction

This chapter examines how outsourcing has become embedded in stock management in public libraries in the UK. It considers the implications of EU procurement requirements and discusses the outsourcing of library services to companies such as Instant Library. Looking to the future, it explores how shared services can offer economic benefits to local authorities.

Outsourcing – whatever is it?

As a well trained librarian, when faced with a question, I consult a reliable reference source. So, when considering outsourcing, I started by looking up the definition in a dictionary – and then in another …

The Oxford Dictionary of English (2010) defines outsourcing as ‘obtaining goods or a service by contract from an outside supplier’.

Outsourcing is a practice which is now widespread both in private companies and in national and local government organizations. It has become attractive, the Dictionary of Economics (2009) suggests, because the products and services procured externally are often better than those provided in-house – and that they are better because of the specialist skills and expertise available from external suppliers. Outsourced products and services can also be cheaper as the outsourcing organization can benefit from economies of scale or scope – and so costs are reduced.

Outsourcing allows organizations flexibility: it is easier and faster to reduce the value of a contract than reduce the size of an in-house workforce. The Dictionary of Economics (2009) comments that it may also be easier to enforce contracts with outside suppliers than deal with a unionized internal workforce.

The Dictionary of Business and Management (2009) discusses which activities might be outsourced: activities which are regarded as non-core to the organization's activities are often the first areas to be contracted out. Functions such as finance, IT, legal and personnel services, are often the first areas to be considered. Outsourcing non-core functions enables the organization to focus more effectively on their core activities. To do what you do best and outsource the rest is a popular adage!

Introduction

In recent years there has been a considerable and significant shift towards delivering, accessing and storing scholarly content in an online format. We have witnessed the mass proliferation of subscribed and freely available digital content across all formats traditionally collected by academic libraries. Crucially, empirical data on user behaviour demonstrates that in almost all subject areas there is an ever-increasing preference for retrieving content online. In fact, the availability of an instantly accessible format for information is now expected and presumed by most scholars and students, as noted in the USA-based 2009 Annual Faculty Survey: ‘Faculty attitudes suggest that a tipping point has been passed for journal current issues, and, with certain narrow exceptions, that print editions of current issues of scholarly journals are rapidly becoming a thing of the past’. (Schonfeld and Housewright, 2010, 1).

The model for providing online access to journals is the most mature in respect of online content and has led the way in offering solutions to the challenges information professionals now face. This publication format will be explored in more detail here. It must be acknowledged, however, that many of the methods and philosophies of collecting, budgeting, storing and providing access apply to all online information formats, including books, data and journals currently held in academic libraries.

This chapter will outline the issues involved in managing the shift from print to online, discuss the challenges and explore some of the solutions we are considering and working with in academic libraries today. A number of these solutions anticipate the future for collections and the chapter will consider what this means for the information profession.

Delivering content

The seduction of the ‘Big Deal’

Over the past ten years the widespread take-up of the nationally and regionally negotiated publishers’ ‘Big Deals’ for online content have had an enormous impact on the size and nature of journal collections in Higher Education (HE) libraries globally. In the UK many of the ‘Big Deal’ negotiations are carried out by JISC Collections, through its NESLi2 initiative. These deals, which are essentially single subscriptions to a ‘bundle’ of journals from a publisher, have been widely subscribed to by institutions of all shapes, sizes and budgets.

Introduction

Collection Management embraces a range of different activities, including selection and acquisition, collection evaluation, collection review, preservation and promotional aspects. To support these essential collection management processes, there needs to be a viable and pragmatic written Collection Development Policy (CDP). An informal, verbal agreement is insufficient if you are going to have a commitment to systematic collection building or development.

This chapter will define what a CDP is and describe the individual components and overall structure that make up a written CDP. The role of a CDP will be discussed and guidance offered on how to devise and implement a CDP. Extracts from existing CDPs are offered as working examples to illustrate points and for you to explore in more detail.

A CDP: what is it, and why do I need it?

Let us begin this discussion by asking the question: What is a CDP? A CDP is a formal policy document or statement which maintains a commitment to systematic collection building and development. Johnson states that ‘libraries without collection development policies are like businesses without business plans. Without a plan, an owner and his employees lack a clear understanding of what the business is doing now and what it will do in the future, and potential investors have little information about the business's prospects’ (Johnson, 2009, 72).

The emphasis here is on the importance of the document and its multi-faceted use. You may also hear of the document being referred to as the selection, acquisitions or stock policy; the terms are often used interchangeably in the professional literature. Even when a stock policy already exists and is in use, however, a CDP goes further.

Evans and Saponaro describe a CDP as a ‘framework within which individuals can exercise judgement’ (2005, 52). The CDP document or statement will form a comprehensive and detailed written ‘contract’ between users and the library and plays an essential part in collection management, as will be explored in this chapter. The CDP is used as an advocate for the library in terms of public relations with users (to inform), for administration purposes (to build reputations) and for justification for funding bodies (to enable communication between external users and internal staff).

Introduction: the early days …

In 2002 Essex Libraries were asked by the Co-East partnership (a co-operative organization consisting of all the public library authorities in the east of England at that time) and Loughborough University to host a project funded by the LASER Foundation to investigate the feasibility of providing e-books in UK public libraries. This chapter outlines the project and uses the perspective of collection development to discuss the issues arising from it.

Context

It is true to say that – at the start of the project – the question of collection development was not among the highest priorities on the project's list of things to consider. This was partly because a number of what seemed to be more pressing questions had sprung to mind first – who might use such a service? What kind of device would they use? – but it was mainly because it was not entirely clear that the concept of collection development, as understood by librarians used to the well established patterns of the print industry, could realistically be applied to digital material.

Unlike the academic world, where a growing number of publishers – particularly of journals – had already seen that the digital approach offered an increasingly rewarding way forward, most mainstream publishers appeared to be either unaware of the potential, or – more usually – very nervous of what might happen to their content if made available to the wider world in such an apparently vulnerable format. Having seen what was beginning to happen to the recorded music industry, with peer-to-peer sharing of digital tracks decimating previously fairly resilient income streams, book publishers were perhaps understandably wary of suffering a similar fate.

As a result, the idea that the project would be able to demonstrate that public libraries could provide the same mainstream material digitally that their borrowers expected to find as a matter of course in print format began to look unlikely, to say the least. In fact, it soon became clear that such material – particularly for recreational reading – was very scarce indeed. It also quickly became equally clear that suppliers themselves were not exactly overabundant, and seemingly all based in the USA.

Introduction

In the previous chapter, Sheila Corrall discusses the concept of collection development. This chapter will consider, with particular reference to academic libraries, the processes of collection management that have developed over time as technology and publishing models have changed.

On a practical level, collection management encompasses a wide range of activities: selection and acquisition, budget allocation and management, serials and electronic resource management and access control, stock evaluation, weeding, storage and preservation, as well as liaison with users, managers, suppliers and publishers and collaboration with other institutions. Promotion and marketing activities are increasingly becoming associated with collection management and are discussed by Mitrano and Peterson, Stubbings and Fairclough in Part Four of this volume. Collection managers are also responsible for the quality of both bibliographic and electronic records and the use of appropriate metadata to describe resources accurately to facilitate access. These activities are not the domain of any specific library sector, although the extent to which they are developed will be influenced by organizational policies and strategies.

This chapter will consider the core activities of collection management and identify how the digital age has transformed the processes underpinning library resource provision from the relevant literature. Its purpose is to update the established practices described in the standard textbooks by Johnson (2009), Clayton and Gorman (2006), Evans and Saponaro (2005) and Jenkins and Morley (1999), by referring readers to the wisdom of those authorities whose knowledge withstands the test of time. The chapter concludes by focusing on the issues raised and identifies some points for further reflection.

Policy and strategy

Collection development and management have become synonymous with each other and a strategic approach to the meeting of users’ information needs emerged during the 1980s and 1990s. Gorman, in his introduction to Collection Management for the 21st Century: a Handbook for Librarians (Gorman and Miller, 1997), identifies a growing preference for the phrase collection management, rather than development, as the fundamental activities of collection building, selection and acquisition, began to involve wider issues such as budgeting, relegation and stock withdrawal, managing new resource formats, storage, preservation, performance measurement, technology and resource sharing. Branin (1994) noted that, as early as 1981, Paul Mosher identified the trend towards collection management calling for a more managerial approach to matching resources and user needs.

Introduction

This chapter will explore methods for engaging the user community and maximizing the use of library collections. It will use as a case study the Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS), a partnership involving the University of Brighton, the University of Sussex and Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust in the UK. Practical examples will be used to highlight where strategies have resulted in increased usage of collections and increased engagement with the user community.

A library provides services for a community of users and develops its collections and services to match the needs of those users. It does this within a budget, supporting the strategic goals of the institution. In any library the collection is its main draw, but in a global digital world where information is offered from a wide range of sources, libraries have competition. It is essential, therefore, that librarians ensure that their collections work effectively and that they match their collections to their user community's needs. To do this effectively it must not simply respond to its regular users, but be proactive in pre-empting the changing needs of its whole community; it must operate through the mantra ‘know thy user’. This is not new, of course. In his textbook on book selection published in 1930, Drury suggests ‘… the right book for the right reader at the right time’ (Drury, 1930, 1). He also states that ‘a qualified selector, acquainted with the demand from his community and knowing the book and money resources of his library, chooses the variety of books he believes will be used, applying his expert knowledge’ (Drury, 1930, 2).

Scientific publishing: a short history

To understand collection management in the subject area of medicine, it is worth briefly reviewing scientific publishing post-Gutenberg. The first printed book De Sermonum proprietate, sive Opus de universo by Rabanus Maurus was printed in 1467 – over 540 years ago. The first scientific journal, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (science being then known as natural philosophy) appeared in 1664, over 340 years ago. Scientific publishing remained the same more or less for the next 300 years.

Outline and overview

Electronic books have taken much longer than electronic journals to be accepted into the mainstream of academic library collections. This chapter reviews the experiences of one UK academic library in developing its e-book collection, some of the impacts it has had on processes and workflows and the analysis that has been carried out. It outlines how this has helped us to understand what gets used and why, and what the most costeffective methods are to build an e-books collection that meets user needs. Finally, the chapter considers some of the challenges that lie ahead.

A history of e-books at the University of Liverpool

The University of Liverpool (UoL) is a Russell Group (i.e. research intensive) University, founded in 1881, with about 17,000 FTE students. Its library occupies two buildings on either side of the university precinct. In common with most UK academic libraries it has transitioned its journal subscriptions from predominantly print, via combined print+online subscriptions for a time, to online-only where possible.

Although UoL Library had provided access to online products such as Early English Books Online and online reference works like the Grove Dictionary of Music and the Oxford English Dictionary Online since the early 2000s, its first steps in ‘proper’ e-books were tentative: a single biology textbook and six Oxford Handbooks in medicine, all acquired on subscription. The uptake was disappointing, though perhaps not too surprising given that there were only seven e-books among about two million print books in the library catalogue. The Oxford Handbooks were not renewed after the first year due to poor usage (though a subscription to twice as many titles was started again in March 2011) and the biology textbook continued for several years with a moderate level of usage until the publisher changed hands and the book ceased to be made available online.

In the autumn of 2005, the library started to support a cohort of online students, the vast majority of them based overseas, for whom the physical library was utterly irrelevant. An attempt was made to establish a critical mass of content in computing and business/management through a subscription to Safari. The Safari model employs ‘slots’ which the library fills with books that typically occupy between 0.5 and 2 slots each.

Introduction

In October 2010, the British Library staged a debate on the motion ‘Is the physical library redundant in the 21st century?’ The outcome was predictably inconclusive, given that the debate was taking place in the UK's most prestigious physical library building. It did, however, underline the fact that the widespread availability of digital technology has already changed the nature of libraries in a relatively short space of time. In the space of little more than a decade, the potential scope of library collections has been dramatically expanded, and the facility to replicate and deliver information to users has been transformed. At the same time, the coherence and organization of library collections has been challenged by the organic growth and pervasive use of digital material available through the internet, providing immediate access to information from the desktop or mobile phone, and raising for some the question of whether libraries will maintain their role of guide and gatekeeper.

In terms of collection development, the conventional discussion of ‘holdings’ and ‘access’ has necessarily shifted, since most of the digital content sought and used by colleges and universities is hosted on remote servers – either provided by the original owner or publisher, or at a recognized data centre – but that content needs to be presented to library users alongside the continuing print collection. However, the library will normally wish to assure itself that the digital material will continue to be available on a permanent basis. Though the material is not physically held, it nevertheless forms part of the library's collection, rather than an external information source. For the foreseeable future, mainstream library collections are likely to be hybrid, and librarians will face challenges in presenting a coherent view of their collections to users.

Development of the hybrid library

In general, technological advances frequently work on a ‘push’ basis, where the technology uncovers a possible approach and the search for applications and appropriate business models then begins. This approach can be seen in the development of commercial e-books and in the rollout of digital versions of newspapers, now beginning to withdraw behind pay walls in order to protect revenue streams.