Collection Development in Public Libraries

Collection development, or collection management, as it has increasingly come to be called in libraries, has experienced a stunning growth in significance over the past 30 years. Some place it at the very core of what public libraries do. Libraries of all types have reorganized functions to include the position of “collection development librarian,” or “collection manager.” Besides selection, deselection, and responsibility for collection evaluation, arrangement, and marketing, holders of these positions increasingly direct acquisitions, shipping, circulation, cataloging, preservation, and serials, and therefore operate at high levels in their institutions. Some libraries have renamed their technical services divisions to collection management and have included centralized selection under this umbrella as well. This rapid growth in significance is all the more remarkable given that, until 1976, the field did not even have its own specialized journal. It did not have its own distinctive subject heading in Library Literature until 1988. Before that time, the subject was usually broken down into smaller areas such as selection, acquisitions, and weeding, and, those specific duties of the collection development role were commonly spread among the professional librarians on a library’s staff, to be performed part-time along with their other responsibilities—usually public service. Recent developments in technology require a closer cooperation among selectors, acquisitions staff, shipping, processing, and cataloging departments than ever before in the history of libraries. Centralized selection has become common, and collection management librarians now need vastly different skills than were necessary in the past. They must continue to adapt their roles quickly and appropriately to the rapidly changing environment both within and without the institution, as technology and expectations continue to evolve