COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES FOR ACADEMIC PROGRAMS

COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES FOR ACADEMIC PROGRAMS

INTRODUCTION

The University of Connecticut Library The University of Connecticut Library creates, maintains, and makes accessible robust and unique collections that serve the research and learning needs of the UConn community and beyond. All undergraduate and graduate programs on the main campus, the four regional campuses, and the UConn Health campus are served by the University Library. While the UConn Law Library is administratively separate from the University Library, the two institutions have a close relationship, particularly in terms of collection development and access. The University of Connecticut libraries have the most comprehensive public research collection in the state, with 3.9 million print volumes and well over 110,000 electronic and print journals. The University Library keeps Four are on the Storrs campus, one at each of the four regional campuses, and one at the UConn Health campus. The University Library’s flagship location, the Homer Babbidge Library, is located in the heart of the Storrs campus and serves both undergraduate and graduate programs. The School of Fine Arts Resource Center in the Fine Arts complex, the Pharmacy Library in the Pharmacy/Biology building, and the University Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center are also located on the Storrs campus. Each of the University’s four regional campuses — Avery Point, Hartford, Stamford, and Waterbury — has a library dedicated to the programs offered there. Regional campus libraries house core collections geared toward undergraduates as well as specialized research collections.

Marine Biology at Avery Point; Business, Public Policy, Education, and Social Work at Hartford; Business at Stamford; and Education, Nursing, and Engineering at Waterbury are all tailored to the needs of graduate programs. The University Library’s Storrs and regional campus locations share a single catalog, and each of these libraries serves as a portal to the collection as a whole. The University Library’s UConn Health Sciences Library maintains a separate catalog that reflects the specialized needs of the UConn Health community. This document applies specifically to the University Library’s Storrs and regional locations (hereafter referred to as “the Library”) and outlines the principles and guidelines used to develop the collections at these locations.

The Collection’s Scope The Library creates and maintains resources.

Collections that inspire discovery and the creation of new knowledge at the University of Connecticut by providing resources that support and enhance research and scholarship, undergraduate and graduate education, and emerging areas of interdisciplinary interest. The depth of collection development varies by discipline and is determined by the University’s academic programs’ scholarship and teaching priorities. In a democratic society, the Library recognizes that free access to ideas and freedom of expression are essential for research and education. The Library is dedicated to providing a diverse collection that is well-balanced. The collection will not exclude materials based on the race, color, ethnicity, religious creed, age, gender identity, sexual orientation, or physical or mental abilities of their creators or publishers.

Ownership vs. Access

The Library is in charge of acquiring, curating, and preserving long-lasting research collections, as well as ensuring their accessibility for current and future scholarship. The need to provide access to a diverse range of information resources with immediate scholarly and research value is balanced against decisions about which materials to purchase for permanent retention. Decisions about when to collect for permanent retention, when to lease or borrow materials, and when to rely on openly available repositories are influenced by research strengths, academic priorities, and student information needs.

Collection Sharing and Stewardship in Collaboration The Library’s collection serves the needs of the UConn community while also serving as a node in regional, national, and international networks of collective collections developed by libraries collaborating at the regional, national, and international levels. The Library understands the importance of

The significance of these collective collections in ensuring the long-term preservation of the scholarly record and the ability of researchers to access this record. To that end, the Library is committed to collaborating with other libraries to facilitate collection sharing and stewardship. The Eastern Academic Scholars Trust (EAST), a print retention partnership of over 50 college and university libraries, is one of the partnerships in which the Library participates. The mission of EAST is to ensure that faculty and students in the northeast United States have access to and preserve the collective scholarly record of print monographs, journals, and serials in participating libraries.

Online Licensing Resources The University of Connecticut’s library, known as “One UConn,” negotiates licenses. and including the libraries on the Storrs campus, regional campus libraries, the Health Sciences library, and the Law library. When negotiating license agreements for online resources, the Library avoids purchasing resources that would impede research or intellectual freedom or would be impossible to enforce. The library works hard to ensure that access is granted to the greatest extent possible and that all approval, signature authority, and contract requirements of the UConn Board of Trustees are met. In support of this, licenses negotiated by libraries generally refer to and incorporate terms and conditions set forth in the LIBLICENSE Model and other widely adopted standards by research institutions. In addition, the library negotiates licenses in order to meet the contract requirements of the State of Connecticut. The State of Connecticut’s licensed resources must be included.

The licensed resources of the state of Connecticut must be included. required contract provisions.

Budget for Collections The Library’s collection allocations are used to acquire ownership or access to monographs, media, journals, databases, and data and datasets; to support interlibrary borrowing and lending; to enable the discovery of print and online materials worldwide; to steward the University’s scholarly output; to secure participation in collaborative repositories that ensure the long-term preservation of both print and digital resources; and to participate in relevant professional memberships. In addition, the Library works with schools and departments to co-fund and co-sponsor specialized resources that benefit our research community.

Collection Development is your responsibility. The collections are administered by the Library’s Collections Steering Committee. It establishes collection development policies, makes broad collection budget allocations, and reviews these allocations on a regular basis.

for strategic adjustment. The Collections Steering Committee is also responsible for high-cost resource selection and retention decisions. Individual subject librarians are responsible for assessing and developing collections and information sources related to their assigned academic disciplines, while the Library’s Research Services unit coordinates the assessment and development of cross-disciplinary collections and discovery tools. Funding is allocated to academic disciplines based on the size of the program, department, school, or area, the type of material required, the record of expenditures in comparison to previous years, and the presence or absence of new initiatives and/or faculty.

Collection Development General Criteria The Library collaborates with the UConn community and consortia to determine which resources should be acquired or retained, and follows the general guidelines outlined below.

When deciding which resources to add to the general collections, consider the following criteria:

Relevance to education and research programs: Relevance to the research interests of faculty and graduate students, current curricular needs, and research trends in academic disciplines.

Existing collection scope and depth: The breadth and historic retention of the Library’s collection in the subject area.

Quality is defined as the level of scholarship and creativity; the long-term relevance of the content and format; the author’s, publisher’s, contributors’, and editorial board’s reputation; and the availability and significance of illustrations and bibliographies.

Currency and timeliness: The rate at which new information significantly advances or supersedes previous scholarship in the field.

Discoverability, usability, and accessibility refer to the ability of users to locate materials in scholarly databases and free search engines, as well as the intuitiveness of the interface design.

of online materials for users with disabilities.

Cost: The cost of acquiring, processing, cataloging, shelving, and preserving materials, both for a fee and for free.

Renewal rates: Subscribed resources with a four percent or higher renewal rate are subject to review. The review will look into the reasons for the significant cost increase and may lead to cancellation.

Language and origin country: The best language and perspective for specific programmatic research and education needs.

Contribution to open scholarly communication: The resource has a positive impact on open access to research and scholarship; the information is now or soon will be readily available to the global community.