Collection Development in the Electronic Environment: Shifting Priorities (review)

Collection Development in the Electronic Environment: Shifting Priorities, ed. Sul H. Lee. New York: The Haworth Press, Inc., 1999. 125 p. $49.95 (ISBN 0-7890-0964-1) Co-published simultaneously as Journal of Library Administration 28, no. 4 (1999).

This book is a collection of eight papers delivered at a conference at the University of Oklahoma, March 4-5, 1999. The editor, Dean of Libraries at the University of Oklahoma, also edits The Journal of Library Administration, and has organized many conferences on library administration over the past two decades.

The theme of the conference is that the electronic environment has made it necessary for all participants in the scholarly communication process to re-examine and shift priorities because of four reasons: 1) a revolution in information technology and scholarly publishing; 2) reductions in financial support for higher education and academic libraries; 3) new demands for accountability; e.g., the outcomes assessment movement; 4) increasing demands from faculty and students. The papers reveal how particular libraries, universities, one commercial journal publisher, and various monograph vendors have shifted priorities in response to these realities in the electronic environment.

The first paper provides a strong statement of the conference theme. Carla Stoffle, Dean of Libraries at the University of Arizona, and two colleagues describe the total reconceptualization and reorganization of their library. The need to respond to accountability and budgetary pressures in an electronic environment provided the impetus to reorganize the library to focus on customer needs, new models of access for electronic resources, and outcomes assessments for reorganized operations. Teams of integrative services librarians were formed to identify, to access, to collect, and to help organize print and electronic resources for customers. Improved customer satisfaction results from reductions in processing time and growth in resources. Position reductions through attrition and retraining opportunities have maintained staff morale. This bold shift in priorities by one library with strong leadership provides a case study worth careful consideration by the entire profession.

Two other articles, "Negotiating the Soul of the Library: Change Management in Information Access and Local Collection Development" and "From Journal Cancellation to Library Strategic Visioning Faculty Leadership," provide valuable descriptions of how librarians at the University of Connecticut and Iowa State University used serials cancellation crises to engage their faculties in productive dialogues about changing realities in scholarly publishing, information technology, and the evolution of the research library from a print-based, collection-centered model to a service-oriented, access-based model in the electronic age. These dialogues resulted in strong faculty support for strategic plans on information access at both universities.

Other articles in this collection are also commendable. Karen Hunter's valuable description of how a commercial journal publisher (Elsevier) sets priorities by listening to customers and balancing needs of editors, authors, and owners provides a perspective often overlooked or misunderstood by collection developers. Deborah Jakubs' (Duke) thoughtful paper on the changing role of bibliographers in the electronic age also merits close reading. Frederick Lynden offers a wealth of practical advice in "Budgeting for Collection Development in the Electronic Environment" based on his extensive experience at Brown University. Other less useful papers on consortia and collections, by Barbara McFadden Allen, and John Walsdorf's report of a survey on electronic innovations by monograph vendors, provide reports on topics treated more effectively elsewhere.

The spring 2000 issue of Library Trends, "Collection Development in an Electronic Environment," edited by Thomas A. Nisonger, covers the same territory as this collection in much greater depth. A comprehensive review of the literature (1980-2000) provides an excellent historical perspective and other articles treat all aspects of theory and practice: the nature of electronic resources, digitization, selection, the role of bibliographer and related staffing issues, and the development of consortia as resource sharing powerhouses. Rather than treating the breadth or depth of a topic, conference papers frequently report how particular libraries grapple with important issues. In so doing a...