[COLLDV-L no. 1239 is reproduced below; the responses follow it.]
From: Melissa Silvestre <silvest_at_umslvma.umsl.edu>
I am interested in what policies you may have regarding the acquisition of
monographic cdroms. I'm starting to see many academic-quality products and
have had faculty recommend some.
Since these resources requires hardware and support to use (as opposed to a
book), it seems to me that this format will blur the policy lines between
reference and colldev functions.
At the moment we have no policy and do not buy any cdrom monographs, so we
are wide open for advice on high level policy and implementation details.
Are you receiving any through an Approval plan?
What criteria do you use to select them?
How do you provide in-house stations to use them?
Do you allow them to check out?
Melissa Silvestre
silvest@umslvma.umsl.edu http://www.umsl.edu/~silvest/
Reference Librarian, University of Missouri-St. Louis
(314) 516-6473
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(1)
From: Susan Peters <libslp_at_emory.edu>
The CD-ROM monograph question is obviously one we are all going to, or have
already, faced. Here at Emory, we do not have CD-ROM monographs coming on
our approval plans. It will probably happen one day, but I suspect we have
plenty of time to think about parameters. All CD-ROM monographs are either
selected by or recommended to Collection Management, not Reference,
_unless_ the CD-ROM monograph is a reference work. Those non-ref works
that we buy are placed in the Beck Center, our electronic text center run
by Chuck Spornick. Anyone can use these on the equipment in the Beck
Center. Currently we do not circulate them, but we will revisit that
policy if demand increases (and it probably will as more students/faculty
buy computers with CD-ROM playing capability). Since the price of many of
these CD-ROM products is comparable to a book, my inclination is to treat
them like a book. However, books are often somewhat easier to replace and
manufacturers don't have a good track record of keeping CD-ROMS "in print"
for a long period of time, so I'm quite hesitant at this point in time to
allow circulation comparable to a monograph.
Since I am the literature coordinator, I can say with little equivocation
:-) that I only purchase monographs on CD-ROM in which the media offers
something that a book that does not. For example: key word searching,
relevant hypertext links, photos, etc. Penguin has come out with several
plays on CD-ROM which offer interviews with the director, the playwright
(in this case Arthur Miller), several minutes of rehearsal, and hypertext
links with add to the understanding of the work, and has done so at a
reasonable cost. I understand that Primary Source Media is coming out with
the works of Virginia Woolf on CD-ROM and I hope to see similar
"enrichment" of the text or we won't purchase the product.
Susan L. Peters, Ph.D.
Coordinator for Language and Literature
Emory University, Woodruff Library
Department of Collection Management
(404) 727-0117
libslp_at_unix.cc.emory.edu
(2)
From: Thomas Izbicki <izbicki_at_jhu.edu>
The Eisenhower Library, Johns Hopkins, expedites all orders for single
user CD-ROMs; but we have a more detailed process for networked CD-ROM
products. Any monograph on CD-ROM would fit into the would fit under the
expedited procedure, and its selection falls under larger guideliness for
any selection. A few electronic products have come on approval, mostly
from our European vendors. We treat them much like approval books, except
that we need to have a Systems person sign off on their technical quality.
More troubling is the way in which electronic versions of serials, CD-ROM
or Internet-based, are being sent by vendors or included on invoices
without any effort to determine market reactions to these changes.
tom izbicki
collection development coordinator
Received on Tue Oct 01 1996 - 09:51:05 EDT