Collection Directions: Some Reflections on the Future of Library Collections and Collecting

1. Greg Seppi

2. Dempsey, L., Malpas, C., and Lavoie, B. (2014). Collection Directions: Some Reflections on the Future of Library Collections and Collecting. Originally published in portal: Libraries and the Academy 14(3), 1-44. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED564803.pdf

3. This high-level analysis of 2014’s trends in library collecting was written by three OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) researchers. It documents and comments extensively on trends in general library collecting policies and procedures and how they are changing as networks between librarians are changing library collection development.

Dempsey et al. argue that libraries need to rethink collection orientation—that while we have traditionally used an “outside-in” model of acquisition, where material created by others is brought into the library, we need to shift to an “inside-out” model where “digitized special collections, research and learning materials, [and] researcher expertise profiles are shared with an external audience” (6). Alongside this reevaluation of internal content, they also recommend that institutions shift their perspectives from “institutionally-organized stewardship toward group-scaled solutions,” in other words, to think collaboratively about their collections and how to meet their collection development goals (7).

This type of institutional re-thinking, Dempsey et al. suggest, will allow collection management decisions to become more intricate as well—that collections might be managed at a local, group, regional, or even global level.

Changing the way libraries think about collection development, Dempsey et al. argue, is possible because of three broad shifts in the existential context of libraries: the ability to unbundle and rebundle with regard to transaction costs and systemic reorganizations; the “informationalization” of decisions via automation and data driven decisions; and the changing “research and learning behaviors” of library patrons (7).

4. The authors’ conceptualization of research activities was particularly helpful. A very nice chart of the research process guides the text’s discussion of the place of libraries in contemporary scholarship, and was my favorite part of the text (p. 14). A very solid, well-thought article.