Levine-Clark, Michael, “What is the Future of Academic Library Collection Development,” Invited Keynote, 14th International Southern Africa Online Information Meeting (SAOIM), Pretoria, June 20, 2018.

1. Permanent Collections vs. Temporary Collections: Considering
the Future of Academic Library Collection Development
SOUTHERN AFRICAN ONLINE INFORMATION MEETING
Pretoria
20 June, 2018
Michael Levine-Clark
University of Denver Libraries
1

2. The academic library exists to preserve
knowledge for future generations.
2

3. The academic library exists to serve the curricular
and research needs of current students and faculty.

4. Coexisting Missions
Traditionally, access
to resources for our
students necessitated
long-term preservation
4

5. Conflicting Missions
Temporary Access
• More resources available
to current students and
faculty
• Weakens stewardship
mission
Permanent Access
• More costly
• Fewer resources for current
students and faculty
• Ensures access in the future

6. The library used to be the primary place to find
information . . . but not anymore
6

7. Student Expectations
• Immediate access to
almost everything
• If you can’t get it
right away, move on
to the next thing
7
• Immediate access to almost
anything
• If you can’t get it right away,
move on to the next thing

9. Buy until the budget is spent
Traditional Collection Development
Purchase books
• At point of publication
• At close to list price
• Made easier by
approval plans
• Rational
• Predictable
Subscribe to journals
• As they are issued
• At list price, then at a
discount as part of the
Big Deal
9

10. Drawbacks of the traditional model
10
Hard to acquire books retroactively
Difficult to access journal articles without initial subscription
Lots of low or no-use material
A somewhat static collection, augmented by interlibrary loan
Heavy duplication of common materials across libraries
Tended to ignore alternative formats

11. Beginnings of a new model
Started with journals
• Shift to access through
journal packages
– But with perpetual access
rights to some titles
• Reliance on aggregator
packages
– With no perpetual
access rights
11
We now accept as a given
that most of the journals
in our collections have
only temporary access
rights.
Started with journals
•Shift to access through
journal packages
• But with perpetual access
rights to some titles
•Reliance on aggregator
packages
• With no perpetual access
right

12. Libraries (mostly) treat these as supplementary
models to traditional book buying
New approaches for books
• Demand-driven acquisition of monographs
–Mostly ebooks
• Evidence-based acquisition
• Subscription packages of ebooks
• Possible because of print-on-demand, decreased chance
of books going out of print, better used book market
12

13. What if we became more aggressive in
thinking about our collections?
13

14. At the moment, Most books not available for local
POD or as ebook on DDA
A (mostly) temporary collection?
• Provide access to any content with potential relevance to
curricular and research focus of university
• Subscribe to some titles
• Purchase or lease the right format for the moment
–POD
–DDA
–Direct purchase at point of need
–Etc.
14

15. Guaranteed access to not-yet-purchased titles and
similar guarantees for other content types
What would be necessary to expand the
temporary collection?
•All books available as POD, ebook
•No book ever goes out of print
•And similar issues for video, audio, and
other content
15

16. We need a solution to
protect what we have
not yet licensed
Ensuring Future Access
•Portico,
LOCKSS/CLOCKSS
protect what we’ve
already licensed
16

17. Just imagine . . .
•ALL relevant titles
available to our students
•Purchase based on use
17

18. A temporary collection
• Confidence that a title will always be available
for potential purchase
• A demand-drive collection’s size is bounded
• At the lower end by limitations in academic quality,
curricular match
• At the upper end by budget
18

19. What about journals?

20. A better question:
What about articles?

21. To what extent can
article-level rental replace
subscriptions and the big deal?

22. And to what extent will the move to
open access replace subscriptions?

24. . . . a medium or small deal supplemented by article rental?
. . . plus more reliance on aggregator packages?
The Big Deal
Often unaffordableOften a very good deal

25. Open Access
If we switch from subscriptions to APCs, we still
have an affordability problem
But, open access would change the way we think
about journal collections in significant ways
• Could concentrate on discovery/access
• Could concentrate on other material types

26. What about Stewardship?

27. A Broader Definition of Special Collections
•Rare books
•Manuscripts
•Archives
•But also resources
important to the
institution
– Print and electronic
27

28. Other Collections
To the extent possible, all material not included in this
more expansive definition of Special Collections will
be provided temporarily
28
Via subscription
with no post-
cancellation rights
On demand

29. This is one way that libraries will fulfill the
stewardship mission
Shared Print Archiving
• Libraries will more aggressively decrease legacy
print holdings
• Regional, national last copy policies and procedures
• Collaborative prospective collection building

30. Expanding the scope of collections
• Research support and analysis
• Citation management
• Primary sources

31. Expanding Even Further
We concentrate our efforts on a very small
portion of a huge potential collection
Traditional
Collection
Scholarly
Resources
The Universe
of Information
Discovery
System

33. Discovery is crucial
The Value of Discovery
The collection is
• Both owned and unowned
• Physical and digital
• Locally, regionally,
nationally, globally
dispersed

34. Delivery is Key
Discovery only matters if
access is immediate
• Local POD
• Unmediated ebook, article delivery
replaces ILL
• Ordering physical copies from other
libraries a last resort, but delivery
will be fast

35. For more on this topic
Levine-Clark, Michael, “Access to Everything: Building the Future
Academic Library Collection,” portal: Libraries and the Academy 14,
no. 3 (2014): 425-437.
http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/portal_libraries_and_the_academy/portal_pre_print/articles/14.3clark.pdf
Dempsey, Lorcan, Constance Malpas, and Brian Lavoie, “Collection
Directions: The Evolution of Library Collections and Collecting,” portal:
Libraries and the Academy 14, no. 3 (2014): 393-423.
http://www.oclc.org/content/dam/research/publications/library/2014/oclcresearch-collection-directions-preprint-2014.pdf

36. Michael Levine-Clark
michael.levine-clark@du.edu