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The Changing Reference Collection - from a Collection Development Point of View
ALA Annual 2002RUSA CODES
Margaret Landesman
Head, Collection Development
Marriott Library
University of Utah
Collections are changing:
• In ways libraries choose
• In ways libraries don’t choose
Collections adding:
• Fewer books
• Fewer foreign titles
• Less retrospective purchasing
• Less microform
Make choices conscious ones
• Clearly choose directions.
• Add the best of the new good stuff and save the best of the old good stuff.
Danger of creating collections which are:
• Aging and marginally useful.
• Still absorbing money and space.
Collection Development’s view:
• Collection Development observes:
• Who are we buying for?
• What do we buy?
• Reasons for buying.
Books
• Who?
• Everybody.
• Requests often urgent.
• Libraries creating new procedures to get books into hands of user faster.
Serials
• Who?
• Faculty.
• Considerable urgency.
• Requestors follow through.
• Serials cancellations make it evident how badly our users want serials.
Databases, electronic resources
• Who?
• Faculty, librarians, users, salespeople.
• Requestor follow through far beyond that for other materials, frequently daily.
Reference works
• Who?
• Reference Librarians.
• Urgency - not high.
• Can it wait? Yes.
Why don’t more users ask for reference titles?
• Users look for books and journals.
• The connection between a reference work and a user is a reference librarian.
• What happens when users don’t come to the desk?
Will users find reference titles?
• ‘Name brand’ titles - OED, Groves, CRC - users will find.
• Others - those titled, “Encyclopedia of…”, maybe not
Do Reference Librarians use reference collections?
• Reference librarians ask to be close to their reference collections.
• Fewer sightings of them actually in the reference stacks.
• Chat reference - work from offices, even when far from Reference Collections.
In tight budget times:
• Titles on want lists, on ‘waiting for end of the year’ pools, are at risk of not getting purchased.
Other forces• Growing prices of bundled products.
• Conversion of one-time to on-going costs.
• Growing technical infrastructure costs.
Growing prices of bundled products
• Bundles getting more and more expensive, eating up more of total available.
• Bundles - number of titles up, cost per title down, total cost up.
One-time to on-going costs
• Inevitable corollary:• If expenditure does not rise, the
number of titles purchased will fall.• Reference works put on serials budget
have newfound security, the rest are at risk.
Growing technical infrastructure costs
• Library expenses for technology are rising.
• Electronic collections are of no use unless the infrastructure is working.
• Funding technology infrastructure now top priority.
An analogy, the mortgage
• First pay the mortgage.
• Then pay utility bills. When they get too high, can conserve to lower them.
• Then buy food and clothes. Food is a necessity, but quality and quantity can vary with inhabitants starving.
For libraries...• The mortgage was the serials bill.
Now it’s technology infrastructure.
• Utilities, impossible to do without, but can cut back. That's serials.
• Food budget. Not a lot left. Looks like eating at McDonalds. That’s the book and reference budget.
Lower the mortgage?
• In theory, a library could move to a smaller house.
• Are any considering this?
• Libraries are refinancing mortgages to build Information Commons, electronic classrooms, and coffee shops.
What follows for reference?
• Plan to create a small but vital, attractive, useful, print reference collection.
• Create a similar larger online collection.
• Find ways to move the collections into the mainstream of student/faculty life.
• Use vision and ingenuity to do it, because there’s not a lot of money.
Conclusion• If there is going to be a rosy
future for reference collections, reference librarians will need to create it.
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