TERMS Investigate

TERMS Investigate

In 1981, Paul Mosher gave a keynote speech in which he “challenged librarians to move toward a new vision of collection management”.  This new vision, which many others contributed to as well, was a turning point for resource management in libraries.  Samuel Demas and Mary Miller discuss the next turning point, which suggests that librarians re-write collection management plans to address both the influx of electronic resources and how to archive current resources.  An updated plan on archiving existing resources is especially salient given that space is increasingly limited.

 A big part of rewriting, or even writing a plan for the first time, is first asking how to best analyze current resources and anticipated future resources to make a better plan.  Electronic resources provide an opportunity to share more instantaneously, which can be a great asset to collaboration between institutions.   As space and general resources decline this collaboration can be the foundation in restoring any lost public trust and there can be a way to specialize in types of electronic and hard resources so that less materials are removed from public libraries.  I liked the message put forth for community “Education, Outreach, and Communication” to help prevent dumpster diving, and hope that any updated collection managements plans would include this public trust issue as well.