EBSCO Information Services
The Changing Nature of Collection
Management in the Digital Environment:
From Independence to Interdependence
Dan Tonkery
VP Business Development
EBSCO Information Services
EBSCO Information Services
Review of forces shaping
Collection Management
Golden Age of Collection Development
Shift to Collection Management
Beginning of Knowledge Management
Impact of technology infrastructures on teaching and research
Building collections to support a distributive learning
environment
Products and services to support digital collections
Case Study: OhioLink
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EBSCO Information Services
Golden Age of Collection
Development
The period lasted from 1950 – 1975
Followed the rapid expansion of higher education
Explosion of research funded by government in all science
fields
Strong U.S. currency
Desire to build great research centers operating independently
Era of the great “Bookmen” as University Librarians
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EBSCO Information Services
Collection Management 1975-1990
Rise in commercialization of Scholarship – the Big “E”
Library budgets unable to keep up with scholarly output
Growth of Collection Development as a professional role
Collection policy development, budget allocation and
collections analysis
Major usage studies under taken
Cooperative collections development projects were tried
but failed as either impractical or political casualties.
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EBSCO Information Services
Emergence of new forces shaping
Collection Management, 1985-2002
Economic constraints caused by skyrocketing serials costs
Shift from humanities to sciences left library without strong
power base on campuses
Emergence of digital information systems
Online catalog followed by electronic reference databases
become influence on collections strategy
Technology revolutionized the way scholarly information is
published, organized and maintained.
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EBSCO Information Services
Impact of technology infrastructures
on teaching and research
Libraries now must manage both print and digital resources
Technology has only highlighted the divergence among
disciplines and created unbalanced demands for access and
support
Libraries are finding it difficult to balance the needs of various
disciplines and continue to support the needs of diverse library
users.
Libraries have had difficulty in building the technical
infrastructure to fully participate in the new digital information
systems.
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EBSCO Information Services
Building collections to support
distributive learning environment
Libraries still holding on to both print and digital world
Until preservation issue resolved, collections are still in both
formats
Digital information systems are too immature for trusted and
reliable medium for the preservation of the scholarly record
Users view is different – if it is not on the Web, it doesn’t exist
Scholarly communication patterns are still intact
Some see a replacement coming for scholarly communications
where the scholars take over and become own publishers and
archivists.
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EBSCO Information Services
Building collections in the digital era
Centrally organized information storage of research with costeffective access
Growth of linkage systems to take author/reader from citation to
abstracts or full-text.
Libraries are becoming aggregators and developing collections
based on access to files not held in the library.
Library providing access to digital collections on servers
networked to publishers, government agencies, universities, and
societies located around the world.
Building validated collections of digital materials on the Web
may be a role of collection development
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EBSCO Information Services
And…
New virtual library consortia are emerging across the country.
Libraries are using digital information services to gain
economies of scale, and unnecessary duplication, and
provide faculties and students with more information at
less cost.
Real cooperative collection development has a new lease
on life in the digital information system.
Librarians should be leaders in organizing information
resources in support of our new distributive learning
environment.
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