Section on Acquisition and Collection Development

Annual Report: 1 September 2000 to 31 August 2001

1. Scope of the Section

The Section on Acquisition and Collection Development concerns itself extensively with methodological and topical themes pertaining to acquiring materials (purchase, exchange, gift, deposit), deacquisitions and weeding, techniques used for determining collection development policies, collection assessment and practices, materials pricing issues, and librarians' relations with publishers and vendors. Also of concern to the Section are the impact and application of technological developments that underlie many of the changes observed in departmental workflow, and partnering arrangements when acquiring materials (such as electronic data interchange, materials licensing agreements, and cooperative collection development). As access to materials becomes an increasingly viable alternative to ownership, the Section finds itself working more closely with the IFLA Core Programme on Universal Availability of Publications, the Sections on Serial Publications and Document Delivery and Interlibrary Loan, and the Publishers' Liaison Committee.

2. Membership and Officers

2.1 As of 1 August 2001 there were 148 members of the Section. The Standing Committee in 2000/2001 consisted of 20 members and 5 corresponding members or observers. In Boston the new Standing Committee was nominates. It consists of 20 members, three corresponding members and an observer.

2.2 The Chairman and Financial Officer until the Boston Conference was Ms Sara Yontan. In Boston the Standing Committee elected Ms Nancy Davenport (Library of Congress, 101 Independence Avenue S.E., WASHINGTON, D.C. 20540-4100, United States, Tel. *(1)(202)7075711, Fax *(1)(202)7076269, E-mail: ndav@loc.gov) as the new Chairman and Financial Officer.

The Secretary, Information Co-ordinator and Newsletter Editor was Jim Vickery. In Boston the Standing Committee elected Mr Pentti Vattulainen (National Repository Library, POB 1710, FIN-70421 KUOPIO, Finland; tel. *(358)(17)2646000, fax *(358)(71)3645050, E-mail: pentti.vattulainen@nrl.fi)

3. Meetings and Events

3.1 Boston, 2001

3.1.1 Standing Committee

The Standing Committee met twice at the Boston Conference in August 2001 to elect new officers, to undertake routine business and to prepare for the Section's activities.

The main points discussed at Boston were:
• Medium Term Programme / Strategic Plan
• the future of the Acquisition and Collection Development Bibliography
• the Handbook for the International Exchange of Publications
• planning for Glasgow Conference 2002
• planning for Berlin Conference 2003

3.1.2 A&CD Section Open Programme

The Section's Open Programme on 'Electronic Collections: Evaluating their ongoing Need and Utility for Library Users took place on 21 August 2001. Standing Committee member Ann Okerson acted as moderator. There were four excellent presentations:
• on Israeli Universities by ELHANAN ADLER (Director, Israel Center for Digital Information Services - MALMAD, Jerusalem, Israel)
• on Ohio Link by TOM SANVILLE (Executive Director, Ohio Library and Information Network - Ohio Link, Columbus, Ohio USA)
• on eIFL prepared by BLAZEJ FERET (Deputy Director, Main Library, Technical University of Lodz, Lodz, Poland), MICHAEL KAY (Director, eIFL project, Open Society Institute, Budapest, Hungary), ANNA MARIA BALOGH (eIFL Project Co-ordinator, Open Society Institute, Budapest, Hungary), PETER SZANTO (Library Director, National Technical Information Centre and Library, Budapest, Hungary) and SAM BROOKS (Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing, EBSCO Publishing Co., Boston, USA)
• on JISC by ALICE WISE (UK Joint Information Systems Committee, London, UK) More than 200 delegates attended the session.

3.1.3 A&CD Section Workshop

The Workshop on 'Exchange of Publications and Projections for its Future' took place on 20 August 2001. It was introduced and moderated by Standing Committee Chairman Sara Yontan. Five presenters from four continents described current practices and made predictions for the future. The workshop was successfully conducted in a mixture of English and French. The papers are in IFLANET and hopefully available for the planned Handbook for International Exchange of Publications.

3.1.4 Discussion Group on Licensing

The Discussion Group on Licensing met again at Boston, convened by Standing Committee member Ann Okerson, to focus on efforts to provide free or very low-cost access to electronic journals for developing countries. Speakers from WHO, Elsevier Highwire Press and International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications reported on new initiatives. Last moment change of the topic generated much interest. It was mentioned in the Professional Co-ordinator's summary as a good example of flexibility. The meeting generated considerable interest; much useful information was conveyed and there were several good contributions from the 80 participants.

3.1.5 Repository Libraries Discussion Group

This Discussion Group, convened by Standing Committee member Pentti Vattulainen, had a meeting on 19 August. This discussion group explored the role of repository libraries in providing access to materials held in centralized storage facilities serving specialized or cooperative library needs. Participants discussed topics including the decision-making that leads to transfer to remote storage, the development of robotic on-demand scanning systems for delivering remotely held materials, and case studies of successful centralized repository libraries. On the discussion panel were Beverly Lynch (Director, Center for Research Libraries, USA), Elizabeth Vernon (Judaica Technical Services Librarian, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA) and Sayyed Choudhury (Director, Digital Knowledge Center, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA).
There were 60 participants.

3.1.6 Publishers Relations Advisory Committee (PRAC)

A&CD Section has a close interest in the interface between publishers and libraries. Ann Okerson represented the Section at the meeting of PRAC. PRAC still discusses its place in IFLA's structure. Agenda items included: an analysis of licensing agencies in different countries; the WHO initiative, for which a webpage would be helpful to promulgate information; whether IFLA should pay $10,000 to join the International Digital Object Identifier Foundation; and digital preservation.

3.2 Plans for Glasgow Conference, 2002

The Committee agreed to convene both an Open Forum and a Workshop at Glasgow. Suggestions put forward for the A&CD Open Programme at Glasgow were: life-long learning, library support for alumni organisations and collection development for distance education. The Committee agreed that these topics gave scope for fruitful links with other IFLA groups such as Reading, School Libraries and University Libraries. As she had links with the University Libraries Standing Committee, Susan Nutter agreed to work on this with Nancy Davenport.

The Workshop at Glasgow would deal with Evaluating Electronic Resources and be organised by Standing committee member Ann Okerson.

3.3 Plans for Berlin Conference, 2003

No definite plans were made for Berlin 2003, but potential topics previously identified included: French collections outside France; collection development policies for electronic material; pricing issues for electronic material; serials pricing; access to electronic dissertations; international resource sharing; issues in consortial acquisition; legal deposit of electronic material; and library/publisher relations.

There was a proposal to organise a Satellite meeting at Berlin. Observer Klaus Kempf agreed to investigate the possibilities locally, and to liaise with the new Chair.

3.4 Strategic Plan, 2001-2003

IFLA had wanted to replace the old Medium Term Plan (MTP) by a Strategic Plan for 2001-2003. The structure of the Strategic Plan consists of the mission statement, goals related to IFLA's professional priorities and actions. The Committee agreed that the Mission could be taken from the existing 'Scope', and the Priorities from the 'Goals', with Actions remaining as such. Nancy Davenport offered to draft a complete statement of the Strategic Plan for comment by members, in time to meet the deadline for passing the approved version to the Chair of the Co-ordinating Board by 1st October 2001.

4. Projects and Publications

4.1 Projects

4.1.1 Guidelines for Creating a Collection Development Policy

Spanish edition of the guidelines was published by the name Directrices para una politica de desarrollo de las colecciones sobre la base del modelo conspectus.

4.1.2 Acquisition and Collection Development Bibliography

Bibliography was to be kept up to date by a nominated Committee member for each country/region submitting 3-5 key publications per year, on a rolling monthly basis. A brief annotation would accompany each entry, and electronic publications articles could be included. The entries would be published in the Newsletter, as well as posted to IFLANET.

4.2 Publications

4.2.1 Handbook for the International Exchange of Publications

After it turned out that the proposed editor of this publication had not fulfilled her promise to carry out the task the new secretary Pentti Vattulainen offered to take over responsibility for the Handbook. A meeting with Sjoerd Koopman left various options open. The unspent 16,000NLG remained in the Section's project budget.

4.2.2 Section brochures

Section's printed brochure was now available in English, French, German, Russian and Spanish. A revised version of the English-language brochure should be produced later in 2001/2002, reflecting the new Strategic Plan.

4.2.3 Newsletter

During the year two issues of the Section's Newsletter were produced and mailed to members of the Section and posted on IFLANET.

5. Financial Report

5.1 Sara Yontan as Financial Officer presented the following report, which was approved by the Standing Committee as submitted. All figures are in French Francs.

6. Relationship with other bodies

As access to materials becomes an increasingly viable alternative to ownership, the Section finds itself working more closely with the IFLA Core Programme on Universal Availability of Publications, the Sections on Serial Publications and Document Delivery and Interlibrary Loan, and the Publishers Relations Advisory Committee.