Navigating the Parallel Universe: Education for Collection Management in the Electronic Age - collection of electronic and printed library resources

Library Trends, Spring, 2000 by Virgil L. P. Blake, Thomas T. Surprenant

ABSTRACT

THE FOCI OF THIS ARTICLE ARE THE SELECTION AND decision-making aspects of the Edelmen model of collection development. The authors review the challenges facing library/information studies education and the place of collection development within that context. The implications for the library/information center's repertoire of the rise of a whole new class of resources is also considered. The authors suggest that a more comprehensive approach to the preparation of library/information service professionals with collection management responsibilities is now required.

INTRODUCTION

For the second time in the past quarter century, library/information services is contending with a very dynamic information environment. This time the stakes are extremely high and go to the very core of libraries/ information centers as we now know them. The consequences of ignoring the burgeoning digital revolution are far higher than the grudging accommodation made for media in the 1970s and 1980s. At that time, in the wake of McLuhan (1964), many librarians were championing the role of the newer formats (films, video recordings, filmstrips, slides, sound recordings) in library/information services (Asheim, 1979; Boyle, 1971; Grove, 1975; Kujoth, 1968; Lieberman, 1975). Nonetheless, this cause never made much of an impression on the curriculum of ALA-accredited library schools. Little change occurred despite the fact that the ALA imprimatur carried with it the obligation to fully prepare library/information service professionals using all the information resources available. The end result was that only those in school library media programs were fully acquainted with the so-called nonprint media and their characteristics. There is scant evidence that nonprint media were exposed to others through the standard collection development courses. Building Library Collections (Carter, Bonk, & Magrill, 1974; Bonk & Magrill, 1979) both in the fourth and fifth editions spent little time exploring this arena. Gardner (1981) limited his discussion to an overview of the formats and the unique problems of selection, and Wortman (1989) confined his consideration of both educational and cultural nonprint media to two pages. Clearly collection development never left the sanctity of its print and paper domain despite the existence of alternative forms of information.

Today there is a revolution afoot. Consider the information resources available merely twenty-five years ago when books and serials were the mainstays of library/information center collections. Beyond library doors, there was also a rapidly growing world of sound recordings and film. Soon to become an integral part of the information environment were video recordings (evolving from reel to reel to videocassettes to video discs), cable television (CATV) networks, and compact discs. In the background loomed the birth of the personal computer (PC). At first the PC was used as a stand alone device that made a number of routine tasks such as writing much easier. The PC was the herald of a digital revolution whose limits have yet to be determined. In the 1990s, many media have been digitized to take advantage of this brave new world. Digitization of virtually all media has occurred over the very short time (barely twenty years) since the introduction of the Apple and its great rival from IBM. Today, printing is based on digital formats as are films, video, and audio. In the process, entirely new media classes have been introduced such as the CD-ROM /CD-RWROM and computer software for just about everything conceivable from games to complex statistical methods.

If this revolution had been limited to applications for stand-alone systems, it would not be as formidable a challenge for library/information centers as it has become. A ripple effect that turned into a tidal wave was created by the development of the means for the stand-alone PC to interact with other machines by the invention of the Local Area Network (LAN). Even the significance of the LAN would have had a limited impact on the library/information center collection if that was as far as the technology progressed, but this was not to be. The LAN was connected to other and bigger networks with a wider geographical reach. The biggest of these networks, now called the Internet, traces its roots to the 1970s and ARPANET. By the mid-1990s the Internet had burst into the consciousness of library/information professionals with the potential to completely alter the role of library/information centers in a wired world wide society. This newest member of the information environment has taken center stage and what library/information professionals must focus on is collection development.

THE CHANGING INFORMATION ENVIRONMENT

The evidence of the impact of the new information environment is all around us. Casual observation of the classified pages of the telephone book (itself digitalized) reveals an enormous array of office supply and electronics stores that deal with computers and/or computer software along with an ever-growing