Meeting of the Collection Development Working Group
AAU/ARL German Resources Project
Göttingen, 22-23 March 1999
Collection Development Working Group members attending the meeting were Nancy Boerner (recorder), Jeffrey B. Garrett, Thomas D. Kilton, James Niessen, Michael P. Olson (chair), and Michael Rosenstock. Other colleagues attending were Thorsten Ahlers, Dorothea Behnke, Christine Bossmeyer, Beatrix Dudensing, Karl Fattig, Gudrun Gersmann, Rüdiger Hohls, Johannes Metz, Elmar Mittler, and John Rutledge.
The group discussed a draft of its mission statement. It was noted that the original draft accurately reflected the commonality of this group with the other three working groups, but it was felt the concept of selection could be added to make the mission statement more unique to collection development issues. The revised mission statement currently reads:
"The Collection Development Working Group explores ways of increasing bibliographic and full-text (both remote and physical) access for North American research libraries, including but not restricted to selection of monographic and serial publications, in all publication formats, from the German-speaking countries of Europe."
The group discussed how to establish more collaboration and communication among North American and German colleagues, and how to increase awareness of collection strengths at institutions in both countries. There was also interest in facilitating knowledge of specialized web resources.
There was discussion about whether it would be desirable or feasible to establish a formal, cooperative collection development plan among German Resource Project (GRP) libraries. It was thought that a major obstacle to this kind of cooperation in North America was the lack of central financial support for cooperative collection development. The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, or German Research Council) offers such support to German libraries that agree to be responsible for one or more of the special collecting areas sponsored by the DFG. In light of the absence of targeted funding and the lack of consensus that such cooperation would be supported by a majority of institutions without this support, it was broadly felt that such a plan should not be advanced at this time. A helpful tool for encouraging more North American cooperation in collection development without the creation of a "Farmington Plan"-like bureaucracy may be the Harrassowitz database of non-acquired German-language publications, which will bring the attention of selectors to potentially valuable and often unique acquisitions of scholarly relevance. This database is expected to be operational by late summer 1999.
The group debated whether the GRP should play a role in supporting more review sources, especially electronic ones like H-Net and Reference Reviews Europe. A number of members felt it was more important and also more in keeping with the overall mission of the GRP to focus instead on achieving greater quantitative access to German-language materials.
In this context, another question that was raised was whether an online version of the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie would be a useful collection development tool, specifically the Reihe B: Neuerscheinungen außerhalb des Buchhandels, since this is where most "gray literature" is announced that is not as well covered by our existing notification services.
As a result of discussions at the meeting, the Collection Development Working Group proposed the following action items:
It will attempt to provide to the German WEBIS site a list of GRP
libraries that collect in similar areas of special collecting focuses,
along with GRP contact names and e-mail addresses, in order to create
a formalized relational structure. The creation of parallel lists of
institutions in the US and Germany, using the "Sondersammelgebiet"
as the structuring principle, would provide a framework for better cooperation
between libraries with significant specialties, partner libraries filling
a "gateway" function to the broader library cultures of their
respective countries.
It will explore the possibility of putting the National Shelf List Count
on the same site, so German libraries may obtain a broader picture of
North American holding strengths.
It will investigate German materials not currently selected by North
American libraries, by monitoring the use of the database of non-acquired
publications being developed by Harrassowitz. It will also encourage
increased use of Series B of the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie, for
selection of non-mainstream materials.
Because a good ILL system has implications for collection development,
the group will monitor the Document Delivery Working Group's projects
that are underway. It will also maintain close contacts with the Digitization
Working Group, especially in exploring alternative means of transferring
content.
As not all members of the working group were able to attend the session
in Germany, the entire group will be asked to respond to Jim Niessen's
proposal to ally H-Net with the Collection Development Working Group.
The entire group will also be asked to address the question of whether
an online version of the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie, released and
updated weekly, would be a more useful selection tool than the current
print version.
The Collection Development Working Group will work on the action plan
and report on its progress at New Orleans in the summer.
