An agent-based collection development system is proposed that uses software agents to perform tasks related to selecting, acquiring, recording, and disseminating information for collection development. Several types of agents are described that could analyze faculty research interests from webpages, identify relevant publications, search resource databases, check the library catalog, monitor borrowing and interlibrary loan requests, and handle acquisitions. Together this multi-agent system could automate many routine collection development tasks currently performed by librarians.