Library Policies: Collection Development Policy

DRURY UNIVERSITY

            F.W. OLIN LIBRARY                     

        COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICY

The following document provides guidelines for developing library collections for use by the students, faculty and staff of Drury University.

General Considerations for All Types of Materials

1.  Curriculum needs of undergraduate and graduate programs.

2.  Faculty participation in selection.

3.  Need to supplement materials in subject areas of strong student interest or of a contemporary nature.

4.  Analysis of circulation statistics and other use pattern indicators to determine areas of great demand.

5.  Reviews in scholarly journals or selection tools such as Choice or Books for College Libraries.

6.  Completeness of holdings as determined by standard bibliographies and other sources

Librarian and Faculty Selection Responsibilities                

The responsibility of collection development rests with the library.  The process of selecting materials is a cooperative one involving the teaching faculty and the library faculty.  The librarians are assigned various disciplines on campus and become the liaison to those departments.  The librarians are responsible for establishing contacts and working relationships with their department faculty to encourage faculty participation in materials selection.  Faculty should be encouraged to recommend books and materials that support their classes and their curriculum in general.  The librarians are responsible for building balanced collections within their disciplines while staying within budget.

Specific Types of Materials

Monographs

These are selected according to the general considerations outlined above.  The library acquires primarily English language books except for materials to support the modern language curriculum and if materials essential to a particular subject are unavailable in English.  The library does not generally purchase multiple copies of a work without demonstrated need.

Serials-Print

Serials published on a variety of frequencies are selected by the library director with input from the subject librarians and the teaching faculty.  Recommendations from the faculty are considered based on the curriculum, ongoing funding, and availability of full text through various electronic databases.  A high degree of selectivity is required for paper subscriptions due to constantly rising and ongoing cost of the subscription, the additional cost of maintenance and bindery, and the number of new serials produced each year.

Daily and weekly newspapers are subscribed to on a very selective basis, but attempt to cover the three major metropolitan areas of Missouri, as well as a few national newspapers covering general news, business, education, and entertainment.  A few subscriptions are maintained for foreign language papers to augment the curriculum in Languages.

Serials-Electronic

All new subscriptions (with annual costs) must be approved by the library director in consultation with the librarians and the appropriate faculty.

Electronic Databases

The director, along with the reference librarians and relevant faculty members, will annually  review whether the new (or continuing) database will add value to the library collection and to the content of classes taught at Drury.  The factors contributing to the decision for or against purchasing a database are:

1.  Support for class work provided by the database content.

2.  Number of classes the database will support.

3.  Cost of the database.

4.  Positive reviews/recommendations from faculty.

5.  Appropriateness of the content to the level of research conducted by students and faculty.

6.  Quality of the interface design for ensuring that students and faculty are able to retrieve the information from the database.

7.  All new subscriptions (with annual costs) must be approved by the library director.  

8.  Projected or real level of use as measured by login statistics provided by the vendors.

Slides and Digital Images

35 mm slides and digital images are collected to support several humanities areas including art, art history, and architecture.  The liaison librarian for art and architecture is charged with developing this collection in conjunction with those who use it.  Commercial slides and digital images are purchased when possible to support classes.  When not commercially available, they are photographed and scanned from books.  The 35 mm slides are added to the circulating collection, with the corresponding digital images added to the password protected online image database.  The librarian seeks input from teaching faculty regarding selections, and balances the collection through selections of his or her own.

Videos

Documentary and feature films will be purchased when they support the curriculum and are selected by the librarians in collaboration with the teaching faculty.  Preference is given to DVD over VHS format when possible.

Sound Recordings and Scores

The library will acquire and maintain a collection of sound recordings and  scores to support the

courses offered by the Department of Music and the Music Therapy program.   This collection is developed by the Music Department liaison in conjunction with the music faculty.

Paperbacks

Generally, paperback editions are purchased for the library because of the lower cost, but it is ultimately up to the departmental library liaisons to decide whether or not a hardback or paperback will be ordered.  For example, art and architecture titles are usually ordered in hardback because they are often oversized and heavy and will not hold up through constant use.  Most paperbacks are reinforced by the library with heavy plastic covers before they are added to the collection.

Special Items

This is a catch-all category that includes a number of bibliographic formats that require special policies.  Included here are the Education Department=s Capstone papers, Senior Honors Theses, and Master=s Theses.  The Capstones are kept at the Circulation desk for 3 years and then returned.  The library should receive all Honors and Master=s Theses, and these are cataloged and placed in Special Collections. The library does not exclude any format or document from consideration for acquisition.

Gifts

The library will accept gifts of print and non-print materials appropriate to the collections, but the final determination rests with the director.  The library cannot legally provide appraisals of gift items.

The library accepts gifts only on the condition that it may sell or discard those items that cannot be added to the collections.  Before accepting gifts on behalf of the library, faculty and staff members must ensure that donors understand and agree to this condition.  Money received from the sale of materials is retained by the library.

Gifts of monies to the library are used to purchase materials and donors of monetary gifts may designate the use of those funds for specific items through negotiation with the Library Director.

Out-of-Print and Retrospective Materials

Where requests or evaluation of the collection reveal a need for retrospective or older materials, the library attempts to purchase them, if money is available, through out-of-print dealers.

Textbooks

The library does not normally purchase textbooks. Exceptions are made for titles that represent the best source of information available on a subject, and that are specifically requested by a faculty member.

Popular Materials

As a general principle, the Olin Library will not purchase popular items such as best selling novels, do-it-yourself manuals, popular periodicals, and the like.  Library staff should direct patrons who request such materials to the Springfield-Greene County Public Library, whose Midtown branch is located two blocks from the Drury University campus.           University patrons may also request such materials through the MOBIUS Consortium catalog for delivery to the Olin Library.        

Specialized Collections

Reference Collection

This collection is non-circulating and is designed to meet the basic research and information needs of Drury University students and staff.  The works chosen for the reference collection supply as much reliable information as possible, with a minimum of duplication.  The library=s reference collection consists of standard and interdisciplinary publications as well as sources supporting the curriculum in such formats as dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases, statistical compilations, directories, bibliographies, etc. typically assigned to such collections.  Electronic sources augment the collection.                  

MOBIUS Consortium Cooperative Collection

The MOBIUS union catalog provides access to millions of books from Missouri academic libraries that can be requested online for delivery by courier to the Olin Library=s circulation department or to any other MOBIUS site designated by the requestor.  MOBIUS member institutions have a responsibility to continue investing resources in building their local collections in order to contribute to the shared resources of the consortium.

Law Collection

This collection exists to support the Paralegal classes taught at Drury through CGCS.  Primarily used as a teaching tool, the collection is not kept up-to-date.  Current legal materials are available through both the Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis databases.

Juvenile Collection

The library maintains a separate juvenile collection in support of the Education Department=s children=s literature requirement. 

Curriculum Collection

This collection is non-circulating and is designed to support pre-service and in-service teachers.  The collection includes student and teacher textbooks and supplemental materials used in teaching grades Pre-K to 12^th.  The collection is maintained with as much up-to-date material as possible on a wide range of subjects taught in elementary, middle, and high schools.  The out-of-date material is withdrawn when new material is added.  This collection also contains current Subject Curriculum Guides for the Springfield R-12 school district.

Materials for the collection are obtained through donations by publishers, teachers, schools, and school district subject coordinators.  Duplicate sets of teaching materials are sent to both the St. Robert and Rolla Distance Learning sites to expand their curriculum collections.

Rare Book Collection

Rare books are expensive, and the library can only afford to make a few purchase for the Rare Book Collection each year.  Accordingly, selections must be carefully made.  Purchases will be made according to the following criteria:

1.  Uniqueness.  The item represents an aspect of printing history, or the printer=s craft, that is significant.  The item represents an example of printing history that is not found in the existing collection.

2.  Usefulness for education.  The item is one which can be used to illustrate an aspect (and preferably several aspects) of printing history or the history of the book to students.

In some instances, rare books are donated to the library and are placed in the rare book collection.  In other instances, a book in the main collection of the library may be transferred into the rare book collection.

Special Collections

Generally speaking, there is not an active collection development policy for Special Collections.  For the most part, items are added to the collection through donations, transfers out of the main collection, and the occasional purchase.  Some items that come into the Special Collections book collection are publications having something to do with the history of Drury University. Other items are placed in Special Collections because of their age, condition, rarity, value, or format (i.e., art books with loose plates).  Also, it may be decided that a Atheft-prone@ item should be stored for safekeeping in Special Collections.

Archives

Items added to the Drury University Archives will usually have some connection to the history of Drury University.  These can be photographs, documents, personnel records, yearbooks, university publications, etc.  The Archivist will strive to collect, both actively (by seeking items and adding them to the collection) and passively (by receiving items from campus offices and departments, as well as donations from alumni and the public), all items related to the history of the university.  On rare occasions, the library may purchase an item related to the history of Drury University.

It should be noted that items donated to the Drury University Archives become the property of Drury University, under the care of the Archivist and the Director of the Library.  The Archivist and Director of the Library will make decisions regarding the retention, disposition, and care of the materials in the archival collection.

Robert H. and Sally A. Gibbons Collection

The Robert H. and Sally A. Gibbons Collection on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy continues to grow through periodic donations of new material by Mr. and Mrs. Gibbons, and by donations from others.  In addition, the library occasionally purchases material for the Gibbons Collection.      

Intellectual Freedom

In carrying out its collection development responsibilities, the Olin Library abides by the following principles of the American Library Association as laid out in the Library Bill of Rights.