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Kennedy, CD Policy for Digital Information Resources
10 Apr 07
Kennedy, John. “A Collection Development Policy for Digital Information Resources?” Australian Library Journal 54.3 (2005): 238-244. (also available online)
Kennedy asserts that the heyday of collection development policies has passed, for a couple reasons. For one, “collection development policies are closely linked to print materials in the minds of librarians. . . . For many professionals and paraprofessionals today, in particular those working in major academic and research libraries, it is digital resources that are of primary importance” (239). This is especially true in a case where a collection development policy will be developed locally, but the majority of big-ticket electronic resources are purchased consortially. However, Kennedy suggests a larger issue that explains the neglect of collection policies:
The very concept of collecting has been called into question as a primary activity of libraries. When increasingly the resources that the library makes available are ones which are not physically collected and brought within its walls but to which it provides access if and when they are needed, it would hardly be surprising if some came to regard a document that seeks to guide its collecting activities as of diminishing relevance. (240)
Of course, Kennedy is only setting up a straw man here and really wants to argue that collection policies are still relevant and worthwhile. He acknowledges that digital information is less tangible and more subject to change or even to disappear; that the “content of the [digital] collection may be more fluid that it ever was in any print collection subject to the ravages of theft and physical deterioration” (241). And although he doesn’t draw this conclusion directly, it may be that this fluidity is itself justification for the development of a policy document. He goes on to identify a number of key roles that a policy can play, all of which we have already seen, but which he hopes to place in a new context with respect to digital information: accountability, decision support, planning, communication, and protection for library staff.
Posted by pzed on April 10, 2007 at 3.21pm
Categories: collection policies, libraries
