Electronic Collection Management

Build and manage your collection of digital resources with these successful strategies!

This comprehensive volume is a practical guide to the art and science of acquiring and organizing electronic resources. The collections discussed here range in size from small college libraries to large research libraries, but all are facing similar problems: shrinking budgets, increasing demands, and rapidly shifting formats. Electronic Collection Management offers new ideas for coping with these issues.

Bringing together diverse aspects of collection development, Electronic Collection Management investigates traditional strategies that still have value and suggests innovative solutions to new problems. It also offers informed discussion on how collection development and management are likely to change in the future. More and more, the emphasis is turning from collecting information to organizing it, a paradigm shift that is nothing short of a revolution in library science.

Electronic Collection Management examines some of the toughest issues of electronic collections management, including:

• handling tensions in liberal arts colleges over patron expectations, library budgets, and collection priorities

• taking technical issues into account in selecting electronic resources

• controlling costs for scientific serials

• organizing electronic resources for ease of access

• facing the challenges of distance learning

• finding fresh perspectives on traditional publication formats

  Electronic Collection Management presents practical advice and solid information on the urgent issues subject bibliographers and collection development librarians are confronting today.