Working Group |
Mission Statement
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.
Collecting German-language materials poses unique challenges for North American research libraries. Since not even the largest institutions have ever been able to approach a comprehensive acquisitions program for German-language resources, libraries have been unable to satisfy the working needs of scholars with their own collections. This has meant that even those libraries traditionally relying on cooperative collection development programs and interlibrary loan have fallen short of their own goals. For these reasons the Collection Development Working Group, in meeting the challenges of German-language bibliography, will focus its efforts on promoting a higher level of inter-institutional and transatlantic cooperation, supported by technologies not existing until a very few years ago. Because of the issues related to German-language bibliography, area studies librarians will continue to carefully follow national developments and the work of their colleagues at other institutions, and resource-sharing will continue to be an important means of addressing issues unique to German-language bibliography.
The Collection Development Working Group focuses its activity on addressing these challenges through a variety of initiatives and development tools. To make the shift from collection ownership to access a more practical and therefore attractive option for participating institutions, the Working Group has shifted the focus of cooperative collection development to resource sharing and discovery. Going beyond attempting to collect the materials that a library anticipates a scholar will ask for, libraries are currently effecting a paradigm shift that focuses on securing the means of obtaining requested information. This is in great part a result of the electronic databases that are increasingly becoming available to scholars, representing powerful searching tools that allow them to explore the literature across disciplines. These databases may contain a significant percentage of the entire corpus of material available in a subject discipline, going well beyond what a library possesses or could ever collect. This shift to resource discovery, rather than resource availability (usually in the form of what a library physically owns), is putting noticeable pressure on libraries to find the means of procuring these materials for their patrons. For these reasons coordination, cooperation, and collaboration have become watchwords in the field of collection development. An important goal of the Collection Development Working Group is thus to promote the mechanisms and tools leading to more effective cooperation among libraries. Technology is also playing an important role in the transformation of other traditional collection development functions. The Internet is radically changing the way materials are being made available to scholars, as primary resource materials are being digitized and made accessible in new publication forms. These materials are proliferating far more rapidly than any single library can control, and here too librarians must coordinate their activities in creating organized gateways, or portals, to scholarly resources. A good example of such a gateway is the German Resources Page of WESSWeb, created and maintained by Reinhart Sonnenberg (UC San Diego) and other colleagues of the Western European Specialists Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries. An important objective of the Collection Development Working Group is thus to research and develop mechanisms for bringing the rapid growth in digital resources under bibliographic control.
To join the Collection Development Working Group's listserv, email Judy Eckoff Alspach with your full name, email address, and institutional affiliation.
