Lilly & Wildman Libraries
Collection Development at Earlham College

Purpose: This statement is designed to be a set of guidelines to stimulate our thinking about the purposes for which the Libraries’ collections are created and maintained. As guidelines, this statement should help empower individuals to make decisions about additions to the collection. The statement also outlines basic procedures and responsibilities. Through the creation and revision of the statement, it is hoped that we will have a collective sense of the goals of our collection development effort and the procedures for handling order requests. This statement is supplemented by a Collection Development Policy statement prepared by the Joint Library Committee of Bethany Theological Seminary and the Earlham School of Religion. (See Appendix B for a copy.)

Introduction: Selection of materials for the College's libraries is a community effort that involves faculty and other College staff, librarians and other library staff, and students. The selection is done within the restrictions of a materials budget allocated to the library each year plus restricted gift and endowment income funds. The library director and the acquisitions supervisor manage the funds and the acquisitions process.

Scope: The College's collections that are the responsibility of the library include: (1) monographs, serials and periodicals regardless of format, (2) audio recordings, (3) CD-ROM's and (4) online databases. (Media Services has responsibility for video formats and Computing Services is responsible for software. Individual departments are responsible for the selection of multimedia used in classroom and lab instruction. Because there is no campus policy about who is responsible for multimedia of general reference value there is a need for open communication among the three units about the areas of overlap, especially as new formats of material appear.)

These collections are developed primarily to support the academic program of the College. This includes support of students’ course related research projects and faculty course preparation. Support is also provided for independent studies, faculty/student collaborative research activities such as the Ford/Knight Projects, student initiated courses, and any other academic activities in which students are involved. Items are also added to the collection to provide a basic coverage of disciplines and subjects outside the curriculum. The collections, in a limited fashion, also support the general interests of the community.

Collection development in support of faculty's personal research is a lesser priority. The library borrows material from other libraries to support faculty research, and the College provides support for professional development activities through the Professional Development Fund.

Criteria: In the selection process, individuals make decisions within the context of these guidelines. To make a selection, each individual applies the scope and criteria statements outlined in this document to the items being considered for purchase. The criteria can be grouped in five categories (1) the quality of the material, (2) importance of the material within its respective discipline and scholarship in general, (3) relevance to the academic program, (4) usefulness to the academic program and (5) intellectual accessibility.

(1) Quality. The quality of an item is based on its accuracy, its currency, and its physical characteristics (e.g., printing, paper and binding quality). In assessing quality, book reviews are helpful along with reputational information about the author and/or publisher.

(2) Importance of the material within its respective field of study and scholarship in general. The "importance" characteristic of an item calls for a high level of discernment that takes into account a number of factors. Some of those factors include the reputation of the author and/or publisher, the uniqueness of its contribution to the field, and its reputation within the field, and the impact of the material's content on the development of the field.

(3) Relevance to the academic program. Relevance refers to the degree of connection between an item's content and the content of the Earlham academic program.

(4) Usefulness to the academic program. In simplest terms, the question is: How likely is the material to be used given the current and future curriculum? If there is a high probability students and faculty will use an item, then it should be a high priority.

(5) Intellectual accessibility. The content of the work should be accessible to undergraduate students. Therefore material aimed exclusively or primarily at research specialists is of lower priority.

None of these five criteria has veto power over the other four. Instead the five criteria must be balanced against one another. An item may be very important within its respective field of study but its subject is not part of our curriculum and therefore not immediately useful or relevant. However because adequate coverage of all areas of scholarship at some basic level is important such a work should be acquired. On the other hand an item that will be, with a high level of certainty, heavily used by students but is less important within a discipline would also be purchased. Other combinations of characteristics can also be imagined. These guidelines are not intended to provide specific rules for every set of circumstances. They are designed to articulate the characteristics that should be considered in making a decision to recommend a purchase.

Monographs: Oversight responsibilities for parts of the collection are assigned to individual members of the library staff. These are listed in an Appendix to this statement. This library staff member will review the order requests coming from faculty. They will also give special attention to their subject areas in the reading of reviews. Since the development of the libraries' collections is a broad based responsibility, all members of the community are invited to recommend the purchase of material. Recommendations should be forwarded to the appropriate person. (See Appendix for list of those responsible.) This assignment of responsibility does not limit others' ability to recommend titles in any subject area. Persons making recommendations should indicate whether the item has a first, second or third level priority. First priority items are those items judged to be essential purchases when the five criteria above are applied. Second priority items are those which seem important, but not essential, and, funds permitting, should be purchased. Third priority items are those which it would be desirable to purchase but are of less urgency than the first and second priority items.

Classroom faculty are asked to systematically make selections based on Choice reviews. Choice reviews are aimed at assessing the value of books to a college library and thus are well suited to determining the appropriateness of items for Earlham's library collections. Faculty are also invited to submit reviews from other sources, publishers' catalogs and fliers as additional recommendations. The recommendations should be forwarded to the college librarian with any comments on the value of the material. The recommendations will be forwarded to the librarian listed in Appendix A responsible for the area. Faculty are specifically asked to rank Choice reviews as first, second, third priorities or "not purchase," and return all cards to the library. The timely review of these cards is important since many academic books go out of print quickly.

Periodicals: Periodical subscriptions are handled somewhat differently. Because periodicals have an on going cost which can be substantial the decisions should be made with broader consultation than what occurs with individual book titles. While all members of the community are invited to submit requests for new titles, requests for new titles and decisions to drop titles generally come out of departmental reviews. These requests are researched to determine: the quality of the periodical, the level of access provided by commonly used indexes, the availability of the periodical at other libraries and through electronic databases, cost, and appropriateness and usefulness for student research. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of many periodicals, other departments and programs, as appropriate, are consulted.

Once the costs for existing subscriptions have been determined (usually about December 1), a determination of the amount of money available for new titles is made. The library director, in consultation with a committee of the library staff, makes decisions on the requests for new titles within the available budget. Decisions to drop titles are made whenever the necessary
background information and consultation is completed.

Faculty are encouraged to review the list of currently received periodicals to ensure that all titles are essential in the support of the current curriculum.

Indexes to periodicals, newspapers and other library resources: The library reference staff continuously reviews and selects a constellation of indexes that will support the academic work of students and faculty. The options open to the library have multiplied greatly in the past few years. For example, while once there was only one Psychological Abstracts as a printed index, there are now over a dozen options for accessing PSYCINFO, its electronic counterpart. These options may contain different data than the printed version and are accessed by one of a variety of software interfaces. Finally the database may be available in different formats such as CD-ROM or online. For example Psychological Abstracts is available through DIALOG as an online database or as a CD-ROM which is almost identical to the print version from 1967 to the present. An alternative is available through OCLC's FirstSearch and contains abstracts for the most recent thirty-six months. Still another option is Silverplatter's CD-ROM or Web version which like DIALOG is comparable to the print version's content. Another example is Chemical Abstracts. A version is available through DIALOG but it does not contain the abstracts. STN online services provides access to abstracts but at a substantially higher cost. Another online Web version is available from the publisher which covers selected periodicals appropriate to undergraduates. In each of these cases the software which is used to search the database is different unless provided by the same vendor, e.g. DIALOG.

The library staff reviews individual databases for their relevance to our academic program and capacity to access our collections fully. For selected disciplines where there is significant library research the library provides access to the discipline’s “flagship” database(s).

In choosing databases, the library staff takes into account the quality of the information content, indexing and, for electronic versions, the search software. A critically important issue for electronic databases is campus-wide access. Whether a new index overlaps with existing indices and the degree of similarity of the search interface with existing indices are also considered. Consultation with relevant academic programs is a routine part of any decision to add or drop indexes.

Library's materials budget: The libraries' budget for the purchase of books and serials (other than periodicals) is allocated into a series of program budgets. These budgets serve as guidelines for purchasing and are not absolute limits. If a subject area exhausts its funds before the end of the year, orders are held until late in the fiscal year when the status of other funds is better known. Funds, especially endowment income funds, and a contingency fund, are reallocated to respond to the held orders.

The library has set aside a sum of money from the annual budget to support new courses and new library use assignments in existing courses. The fund provides a limited amount of money for rapid upgrades to the collection in a specific area. The funds can be sought through a joint request by a librarian and a faculty member who have identified a list of items that will be immediately useful. The request should be made to the library director who plans the use of the funds each year. This fund is for regularly or newly offered courses, not Ford/Knight projects which receive support in funding the project.

The budgeting for new programs is done once a year when the program budgets are created. New programs will be assigned a target amount for its first year as a guideline and then be adjusted in subsequent years as needed. Because most new programs are interdisciplinary and build on the strengths of existing departmental programs, it is often possible to coordinate purchases between the relevant departments’ budgets and the new program’s budget. Faculty who are proposing new programs are urged to consult with a member of the library staff as the program proposal is developed. Since a library representative sets on the Curricular Policy Committee, it is the representative’s responsibility to alert both the library about pending proposals and to either consult with the proposer of the new course or program, or notify the appropriate library staff member so s/he can contact the proposer(s). Unless the program has been approved and included in the library budget submitted in early December of the previous academic/fiscal year, the funding for support of new programs must be taken from existing program budgets. This will be corrected in subsequent years of the program.

World Wide Web resources: The World Wide Web, as an almost endless source of information resources of vastly varied quality, begs for policy and procedures which will help library patrons get to the most relevant quality resources. The Library assumes responsibility for a collection of Web pages that present the library and its services and collections, and provide links to selected Web resources around the world. The selection is dictated primarily by the academic needs of students and faculty. Through suggestions from faculty and students and the reference librarians, sites are evaluated, selected, and listed on the library's Web directory along with a brief description. In addition to the item's relevance to student academic work, Web sites are judged for their quality. The quality of an item is based on its accuracy, its currency, and its physical characteristics (e.g., page arrangement, quality of graphics). The importance of the content within its respective field of study and scholarship in general is also an important element in judging the site's quality. This "importance" characteristic of an item calls for a high level of discernment that takes into account a number of factors. Some of those factors include the reputation of the author and/or publisher, the uniqueness of its contribution to the field, and its reputation within the field.

Weeding: "Weeding" is the unfortunate word choice for the thoughtful deacquisition of library material. The criteria used for selection are applied to materials already in the collection to determine whether they have outlived their usefulness and should be removed from the collection. The process involves both classroom faculty and librarians, but most likely will be initiated by a librarian. Faculty are consulted when a significant and systematic review of a subject area is undertaken.

While weeding should be an ongoing activity, there will be times when either special attention is being given to the collection by individual faculty or a department, or space constraints become an impetus for reducing the size of the collection.

Appendix A

Areas of the collection
and those responsible for the collection's development
(These will be reassigned from time to time.)
Please consult the following link (Excel spreadsheet format)

Appendix B

Earlham School of Religion / Bethany Theological Seminary
Lilly Library
Collection Development Policy

Introduction

The Earlham School of Religion and Bethany Theological Seminary rely on and contribute to the Lilly Library of Earlham College as their source of library collections and services. The legal and financial aspects of this relationship are described in the “Library Agreement” of April 15, 1994. This document, on the other hand, serves as a policy for the maintenance and development of the Bethany and ESR collections in Lilly Library. It describes the purpose of the collections, the criteria for adding to or deleting from the collections, the procedures to be followed, and the responsibilities of individuals in carrying these out. This document is not meant to be a strict set of rules, but rather a set of guidelines. It was written by the Librarian of Theology in consultation with the ESR/Bethany Joint Library Committee, and approved by the faculties of ESR and Bethany on March 30, 1998.

Nature of collections

It is the primary goal of the seminary collections in Lilly Library to support the Bethany and ESR curricula. Because the seminaries’ communities have access to all the general and disciplinary collections in the Earlham Libraries, ESR/Bethany library funds can be used primarily for theological materials that directly support the seminaries’ curricula. Given these factors, here are some criteria for selection of material:
Materials should be college, graduate, or professional level, and scholarly in nature.
Topics of materials should be relevant to ESR or Bethany programs, courses, or community-wide research interests.
Materials should be primarily in English. All ESR/Bethany students read English, while few read languages other than English.
Reference materials should support seminary student research, and general information needs relating to the study of Christianity.
Because of limited resources for theological materials, the following types of materials will not be collected extensively: popular and inspirational religious material; Sunday school texts and other religious education tools; textbooks; non-theological materials.
In addition to meeting these criteria, periodicals should be accessible via a research tool such as the ATLA Religion Database.

Non-print materials

Sound recordings and CD-ROMs are selected according to the same guidelines for books. Video recordings, on the other hand, are not collected by Lilly Library. Bethany and ESR purchase videos out of non-library funds.

Responsibility for selection

Most selection is done by the Librarian of Theology and the seminaries’ faculties. The Librarian uses the following tools for selection: Choice, Library Journal, Religious Studies Review, Critical Review of Books in Religion, reviews in other periodicals, and publishers’ catalogs. Recommendations from students or others in the community may be forwarded to the Librarian of Theology for consideration. If a seminary faculty member wishes to make a recommendation for materials to be purchased with other library funds, this too may be sent to the Librarian of Theology for consideration. Gifts may be made to the library, but the Librarian of Theology will decide whether or not to add the items to the theological collections. Because of the ongoing cost of serial subscriptions, the Joint Library Committee will consider and decide all recommendations for standing orders or periodicals. The Joint Library Committee will also consider any orders for very expensive or unusual materials.

Weeding

Periodical subscriptions and standing orders will be reviewed by the Joint Library Committee approximately every five years. The theological reference materials will be maintained and weeded by the Librarian of Theology. Weeding of the circulating collection will be coordinated and overseen by the Librarian and the Joint Library Committee, with input from the faculties. Books will be withdrawn if they have lost their relevance to curricular or community interests, or are out of date.

Acquisitions procedures

Books: Orders from faculty for books may be submitted directly to the Acquisitions Clerk (drawer 198, or email follisde). Orders may be sent in the form of a legibly completed book order card, an email message, a publisher’s catalog, or the photocopy of a review. (No small pieces of paper, please.) Order information should include title, author, publisher, ISBN (if possible), and the name of the person ordering. Orders from non-faculty should be forwarded to the Librarian of Theology (drawer 198 or email larsoch).

Periodical subscriptions and standing orders: Forward information about the publication to the Librarian of Theology for decision by the Joint Library Committee, which will use criteria given above.