Collection Development Policies

Introduction

The UCSB collection development policy statements describe the scope of the Library's collecting, discipline by discipline, and measure the Library's activities against the scholarly activities of this University. The UCSB Library's collection efforts and emphases largely mirror the academic interests of this campus.

Periodic reviews will be undertaken so that the CD Policies continue to reflect the reality of the academic world which the Library serves, the academic world of the present and to some degree of the future. In general, each collection development policy should be reviewed every five years, and revised as necessary.

Format for UCSB Collection Development Policies

Organization of the policies: Policies are written in a uniform manner to facilitate the comparison between the various collections comprising the entire University Library collection of information materials. The various sections of each policy are:

• Scope and Purpose: a statement specifying the subjects needed to support the purposes of the department or unit for which a collection is established. For each subject included a level of collection is specified reflecting the relative importance of the subject to the curriculum.
• Curriculum: A general description of the curricula to be supported by the collection described above establishes the reasons for maintaining the collection. The description is abbreviated since university curricular documents can be consulted for details.
• Geographical coverage: a statement of the geographical areas to be covered in the information collected.
• Language: a statement of the usable language or languages for the information in the collection described.
• Period coverage: A statement about the relative importance of currency and specific historical periods.
• Publication types: specifies the intellectual levels and organization of the information collected.
• Formats: the relative quantities for the inclusion of various publication media should be given in this statement.
• Remote sources: specifies which information sources will be readily available to supply the needs of this collection without our having to acquire them locally.
• Exclusions: a statement to eliminate anything not needed which would be acquired by a literal interpretation of the above.

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Collection Managers' Manual Procedures Table of Contents

Author: Cecily Johns
Last modified: May 13, 1998

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