Collection Development Policy

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss on the collection development policy and its implementation that focused in academic library. The implementation will arises some issues and challenges. Academic library confronted the issue of budget and library is now moving towards e-book. The paper offers insights into how to overcome the issues and challenges faced. It describes the area in which collection development policy can be used to fulfill the critical roles of supporting the library’s mission to provide excellent resources, services and facilities in academic library.

Keywords – Collection development; collection development policy; academic library

Introduction A library benefits come from the collections that it hold. Without library collections,

It may also address intellectual freedom, future goals, and special areas of attention (Johnson, 2009). The policy will guide library staff in completing their task regarding the collections that they gain for their library because it provides details procedure on certain collection development.

Specifically, the staff consults the collection development policy when considering which subject areas to augment and determining how much emphasis to give for each area (Evans, 2000). Some libraries call it an acquisition policy, some a selection policy, some a collection development policy and others simply a statement. Whatever the local label, the intent is the same, that is, to define the library’s goals for its collections and to help staff members select and acquire the most appropriate materials. As highlighted by Gregory (2011), with the collection development policy, it may serve as blueprints for the operations of a library. Furthermore, by implementing the policy, it will assists the tasks of acquiring, organizing and managing library

Thus, collection development policy plays an integral role in collection development activities. It can therefore be said that a collection development policy is a document drawn up by a specific library to provide guidelines whereby the collection is developed and managed to meet the needs of that particular user group. To the librarian, the process of identifying what the library ought to acquire, determining how and from whom it can be obtained is time consuming and often quite complex. In many ways the work is hidden from the public. However, without an effective acquisitions management and collection development program, the expectations of the library users can never be met. The selection of the library materials is not the responsibilities of the librarians solely. The whole university community play their role in developing the library collection to ensure that the library fulfill the needs of the community without any