From: "Tony Schwartz" <tony_at_delphinus.lib.umb.edu>
I would appreciate hearing from academic libraries that,
during the 1990s, shifted personnel organizational models
for collection development from (a) many selectors with
several other duties to (b) relatively few selectors for
whom this is their primary, nearly full-time responsibility.
On one hand, the rationales for spreading out collection
development responsibilities have been job enrichment,
subject expertise, and the ways that collection development
and reference work interact. On the other hand, a main reason
for centralizing collection development in a few hands is that
this responsibility, lacking immediate time pressures, gets
crowded out' by never-ending daily pressures of public services.
Posting brief queries on list serves can be extremely useful. A few
years ago, I asked about the prevalence of cost-per-use decision
making in serials management and received 53 responses. I hope this
query will elicit such consideration. Please respond directly to
me and I'll summarize for the group.
Thanks, Tony Schwartz (University of Massachusetts-Boston)
Lynn F. Sipe
Associate Dean, Faculty Affairs, Info. Services Division
University of Southern California, Doheny Library 100
Los Angeles, CA. 90089-0182
LSipe_at_calvin.usc.edu 213/740-2929 FAX 213/749-1221
Received on Sun Feb 08 1998 - 14:18:43 EST