"Explores the paradigm of "area studies" - a way of supporting regionally-focused collecting, processing, and liaison work - in the academic library, through an explicitly anti-colonial lens"--

Strategies and tools to help you plan, build, and maintain your library collection! Selecting Materials for Library Collections takes you step-by-step through the process of planning, building, and maintaining a quality library collection. This up-to-date guide addresses the interests and concerns of academic and public libraries with expert advice on budgets, policies, and planning. The book examines print, non-print, and Internet selection resources, including the OCLC WorldCat Database and ACQNET-L. You’ll find valuable information you can apply right away to help you keep any collection relevant and up-to-date! Selecting Materials for Library Collections provides the tools you need to keep your library collection current. Seasoned experts share their thoughts on how to analyze your users’ expectations and then provide them with the materials they need. The contributors also examine the selection aids that they use in their own acquisitions work and then look at how to achieve a balanced collection that efficiently serves their clients’ needs. Supplementary reading lists and extensive bibliographies provide you with additional resources. Selecting Materials for Library Collections presents the latest information on: using print, non-print, and Internet selection resources such as OCLC WorldCat database and ACQNET-L initial collection assessment and decision making collection tool evaluations acquiring international core titles the New Thought movement approval plans—set-up, maintenance, and evaluation the newest technology for media selection specialized library collections in music, art, business, economics, health, sports, leisure, and more

Skillfully acquisitions and collection development plays a key role in creating exceptional libraries. These authoritative resources provide the guidance you need to build and maintain the comprehensive, high-quality collection your customers demand. Get expert advice on: a- selecting material from serial to CD-ROMs; b- participating effectively in the budget process; and c- evaluating your existing collections and vendors. Developed by ALA's Association for Library Collections & Technical Services, this blueprint for a collection-development training program can be easily adapted to meet the collection management goals and organizational structures found in libraries of all types and sizes. Outlines for training are given in these areas, among many others: collection and development policies; selection and review processes; weeding and deselection; and navigating electronic networks. The guide divides training into three skill levels, supplies a curriculum framework matched to collection duties, and identifies competencies achievable after training.

Acquisitions and Collection Development in the Humanities is a one-of-a-kind guide on the procedures, approaches, and principles needed to make sound decisions in acquiring materials in various areas of the humanities. It gives you an inside look at managerial concerns in documentary delivery, changing budgetary needs, and fluctuations in journal prices and helps you address many of the important questions in acquisitions and collection development within both traditional and technological environments. As contributing author Dennis Dillon puts it, the ultimate goal of humanities librarians “is not to acquire information bytes and bits, but to promote integrity: integrity of texts, integrity of selection, the integrity of the collection, and the integrity of the library and its ultimate purpose.” This objective underlies this multifaceted and comprehensive collection of articles, as the authors address many interesting issues, developments, and challenges in the field, including: selecting candidates for digitization and producing e-texts collecting in areas that don’t have immediate utility or that may be unpopular what librarians need to know about the humanities as a discipline in order to effectively meet the informational and technological needs of their constituencies online discussion groups as useful sources of webliographic information cooperative collection building the importance of maintaining a high degree of local ownership for materials the principles, criteria, and tools needed to develop a Native American studies collection document-driven and use-driven approaches to collecting acquiring and preserving records that chronicle the role played by African Americans in the United States’development Acquisitions and Collection Development in the Humanities can help professional librarians, graduate school faculty, and students in information and library science acquire the knowledge and skills necessary for building a broadly based and academically responsive collection. It will certainly help you keep up with changes in the information environment and show you how the tools you’ve developed for selecting traditional library materials will be useful as you grapple with electronic texts, “spider” search mechanisms on the Web, becoming a webliographer, and budget shortfalls.

A guide to balancing traditional collection issues with electronic access and document delivery demands, Collection Development: Access in the Virtual Library helps librarians find solutions and approaches for dealing with changes occurring in interlibrary loan, regional consortia, commercial vendor relations, and ownership versus access. Its sophisticated analyses offer you clarity of vision, the wisdom of experience, and solid advice as you are transported into the 'virtual library environment' with its variety of expectations, service complexities, and information technologies. Interested in reducing local collecting costs while expanding the universe of information and knowledge available to your primary clientele? Collection Development will show you just how many options are out there for enhancing your virtual environment, as it explores: teaching your users advancing bibliographical retrieval and assessment methodologies the delivery of library resources electronically for distributed learning/distance education conducting CD-Rom collection development comparisons planning space for a more technologically oriented research environment enriching your on-line catalog with contents pages and new indexing capabilities the impact of change and shifting paradigms on public services staffing the development of good electronic presentation design Still not convinced that this is the book you need to improve access in your library? Think again! Collection Development will help you with library control and ordering articles via commercial document delivery; it will help you develop coherent and intuitive ways of organizing and presenting available electronic resources; it will help you work with administrators and funding agents to attain a balance between traditional library resources and emerging information technologies, and much, much more!