Re: Building collections at all

[Bill Cohen <bcohen7719@aol.com>]

Rick's most insightful overview and intriguing project points to 
possible, future "on demand/just-in-time" library services.

      - Bill

Rick Anderson wrote:
>> collection-building in these very difficult times and have been
>> struck by the fact that there is little discussion of testing
>> on-demand services.
>>
>
> Joe, there is a actually quite a lot of discussion going on in
> the library world around this issue, and experiments are in fact
> being conducted.  Greg and Scott have both alluded to some of
> them.  At my institution we're in the second phase of a fairly
> large-scale experiment with on-demand ebook purchasing using a
> system whereby many ebook records are loaded into our catalog and
> only those that are actually used by patrons get purchased and
> added to our permanent collection -- records for the unused
> titles eventually disappear.  A good number of other research
> libraries are conducting similar tests.  We're also looking very
> seriously at purchasing an Espresso Book Machine, which would
> allow us to print and bind books on demand -- selling them to
> patrons where ownership is desired, and adding them to our
> collections (with exceptions) where it isn't.  (Given our
> relatively poor track record at guessing what people will want,
> demonstrated patron interest in a particular title seems like as
> good a collecting criterion as any.)
>
> Here's the really radical question, though: why are most of us
> building permanent collections at all anymore?  As Greg pointed
> out, in very many cases we can now respond to patrons' expressed
> needs quickly enough that buying speculatively seems like a poor
> use of money -- especially in the current budget environment.
> It's already kind of silly for patrons to use our catalogs as
> discovery tools, since any library's collection represents only a
> tiny fraction of the material that is actually available on any
> given topic.  Since our patrons tend now to be searching through
> a much larger segment of the information universe than we could
> ever hope to collect ahead of time, why don't we focus on fast
> fulfillment rather than wasting money on stuff no one wants?
>
> Rick Anderson
> Assoc. Dir. For Scholarly Resources & Collections
> Marriott Library
> Univ. of Utah
> rick.anderson@utah.edu
>

-- 
Bill Cohen, /Publisher  /
*The Haworth Press*
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