COOPERATIVE COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT IN ICT ENABLED LIBRARIES: AN OVERVIEW

*Dr. Shekar H.P. **Nirmala Chigateri

ABSTRACT:

The libraries are moving beyond their traditional role as custodians of printed materials and integrating new methods of storage, retrieval and transmission of information. At the same time they are, incorporating the wide changes that technologies bring to organizational structures and responsibilities. Today’s world is virtually under the grip of information and communication technologies (ICT). The basic areas of common discussion of technology applications in LIS are library collection, management systems, electronic resources, digital libraries and knowledge management. This paper discusses on the academic libraries, history of collection management, changing patterns, role of librarian’s in shaping Collection development, new boundaries in cooperative collection management etc,.

Key Words: Academic Libraries, development, Management, Cooperative collection.

1. INTRODUCTIONThe teaching came to be practiced through written word in the times of Buddha, which

gave rise to genesis to libraries. The existence of such libraries was noticed by Fahien in the fourth century A.D. regarding the Medieval Period of Indian history it is said to be silent about the existence of libraries. Though some Muslim rulers owned and patronized libraries in their palaces. College libraries which became the progenitor of university libraries were first to develop. According to the Hindu Commission Report of 1882, some of the college libraries have acquired more than a thousand books by 1882. The Indian University Commission (1902) was very critical of the poor state of libraries. It recommended of good reference libraries. An immediate outcome was the enactment of the university Act of 1904 and the Punjab University, Lahore was the first university to take note of it. Over a period of about 35 years, from roughly 1950 through the mid-1980s, collection management in research libraries was codified and professionalized. Three significant issues greatly influenced the evolution of collection management during this formative period:

• The rapid expansion of higher education, scholarship, and library collections; • The shift from collection development to collection management; and• Attempts to collect cooperatively as duplicate collections grew.

*Head, Knowledge Resource Centre, IBS Business School, Bangalore-60. E-mail: Shekarhp@gmail.com. Cell: +91 9945799927 **S.G.Librarian, JSS Degree College, Vidyagiri, Dharwad. E-mail: nirmalachigateri@gmail.com

Information overload may be the greatest challenge that scholars and librarians have faced in the twentieth century. As an example, 840 papers were published in mathematics 1870; by the middle of the 1990s, there were 50,000 new mathematics articles being published annually. The second half of the twentieth century has been a time of spectacular growth in all fields of knowledge but especially in scientific disciplines. Allen Kent issued one of the most comprehensive and controversial collection use studies to be found in the literature of

librarianship: Use of Library Materials: the University of Pittsburgh Study- Kent and his research team found "that any given book purchased had only slightly better than one chance in two of ever being borrowed." As books on the shelves aged and did not circulate their likelihood of ever circulating diminished to as low as one chance in fifty. Journal use, in general, was also discovered to be low.

2. PRACTICE OF COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT AND MANAGEMENT

Paul Mosher suggested -librarians to move away from a traditional "collection development" perspective, which emphasized only acquisitions, selection, and collection building, toward a new vision of "collection management," which encompasses a much broader range of policy, planning, analysis, and cooperative activities. This field includes the theory and practice of collection policy development, materials budget allocation, selection, collection analysis, collection use and user studies, training and organization of collection development staff, preservation, and cooperative collection development. The library might still be the symbolic heart of the college/university, but for several reasons it was losing its central place as a funding priority on many campuses. Because:

• New information technology was creating "alternative paths" for access to scholarly information, and investments in technical infrastructure and computing centers were diverting funding from the traditional library.

• Second, the decline in arts and sciences and the rise of science and technology programs in universities were eroding the power of disciplines that most directly supported the traditional library.

• Third, the profession of librarianship itself seemed to be in disarray, fraught with uncertainty and anxiety over its future in the computer age.

• Fourth, libraries were not competitive enough in the new, aggressive environment of higher education.

3. COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICY

The collection development policy described here reinforces the missions of Academic Library Services: to serve the advancement of research, learning and teaching within the College /University by providing solutions to the information needs of clients through efficient, effective and innovative services. The Collection development policy enables the library to:

• Work actively with Colleges, Schools and Research centers to ensure that current and future needs and priorities are recognized

• Provide consistency across the Colleges, Schools and Research centers in policy governing the building of collections

• Assign funding to priority areas where there is demonstrated demand

• Manage effectively the considerations and constraints of available space

• Identify needs for access to resources through methods of provision other than print

The Policy has to be reviewed periodically (at least every 3 years or in alignment with

Institutional Reviews) to ensure that it takes account of the changing circumstances, needs and priorities of users.

4. ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF A LIBRARIAN IN COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT

The possible role and responsibility of a librarian within the institution level are as follows:

• In consultation with the academic community, defines and implements policies and strategies for the development and management of the Library’s information resources, covering print and other media, including their selection, acquisition and retention/disposal, cataloguing, preservation and conservation, storage and security, exploitation and promotion.  This has to be done in liaison with the library management team.

• Directs and co-ordinates the work of those persons responsible for collection management operations by setting objectives, allocating tasks and agreeing priorities.

• Formulates and implements policies and strategies for the management and utilization of Library space, including determining allocations for storage and display of Library materials.

• Builds effective relationships with prospective donors, sponsors grant-awarding bodies and other external contacts, and represents the Library’s interests in the wider academic and professional community.

5. COOPERATIVE COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT

Cooperative collection development, which in some sense is the ultimate activity of this new functional field of librarianship, has proved difficult to implement and to sustain. It is clear, both in theory and practice, which no single library can collect the entire and exploding record of knowledge; and, as use studies show, no library really needs to do so to satisfy most of its users’ needs. A reasonable approach would be to coordinate collection development locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally to maximize local use of library collections and broad coverage of all fields of knowledge. But, a number of national attempts to collect cooperatively have failed, and these include the Farmington Plan of the 1950s and 60s, the National Periodicals Center of the 1970s, and Research Libraries Group’s Conspectus project of the 1980s. The Center for Research Libraries, however, emerged as a viable model for depositing and sharing highly specialized research material. Librarians and faculty members are loath to give up their print collections and journal subscriptions until digital products are more stable and mature and are able to be archived successfully. In fact, many publishers still require that libraries purchase a print version along with their electronic product.

Collection builders evolve into knowledge prospectors. The creation of validated collections of digital materials and their relationship to validated non digital materials offer a significant added value to the serious information seeker, while allowing other linkages to be developed and used. Reference tools, electronic journals, and digital archives of historical materials now come in a variety of bundled packages. Johns Hopkins University Press, Elsevier, JGATE, DELNET, INFLIBNET, Academic Press, and the American Chemical Society all market

their entire line of electronic journals as a complete package to individual libraries, local library consortia, and even to state-wide or regional groups of libraries. The J-STOR project is an excellent model of how new technology and cooperative support can be used to provide new options for access to and storage of scholarly journal back files. And, libraries are beginning to aggregate themselves by creating "virtual libraries" at the state or regional level to pool resources and services. The Ohio Library and Information Network (Ohio Link at <http://www.ohiolink.edu>, Georgia Library Learning Online (GALILEO at http://www.galileo.peachnet.edu), and the Midwest’s Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) Virtual Electronic Library (http://www.cic.uiuc.edu/programs/VEL/) are just three examples of new virtual library consortia.

Figure-1. Pie Chart on normal Cooperative Collection Development (Source-Google survey)

No resource sharing platform, no matter how good, can erase all of the barriers to cooperative collecting, particularly among autonomous institutions with an historical reputation for high-quality, comprehensive collections. Even with subjective considerations aside, national rankings such as the Association of Research Libraries rely on the finite measure of ownership, not access. In this environment, no single library wants to be the first to appear to be ceding their collecting duties to outside entities, even (or perhaps especially) peer institutions. Overcoming this taboo requires collaboration, communication, and information. How to distribute the purchased popular material as per each library approval plan is a difficult task.

Before attempting that feat, it is important to look at areas of the collection that are ripe for cooperation. No cooperation can succeed without communication. As long as librarians are isolated within their institution, there will be limited collaboration, if any. As good as the communication platforms are today, trust and cooperation depend upon some level of face-to-face discussion and deliberation. Email, conference calls, and online meeting tools provide a wonderful platform for maintaining momentum; wikis and cloud document storage platforms provide excellent tools for distributed work and record keeping; but fundamental to success is some basic funding for meeting and building trust among individuals. This kind of basic funding also serves as an administrative acknowledgement of support for the programme as well as to ensure accountability of librarians to the library administration. Collaboration will be slow or nonexistent without good communication and institutional support.

Figure-2. Shows the need of comprehensive understanding

Rolling out a comprehensive cooperative collection development plan for a multimillion volume collection across a partnership of more institutions comprising over a hundreds of individual libraries is impossible without a comprehensive understanding of collection makeup and use. Assessment must address both institution-specific needs as well as partnership-wide needs. None of this can take place without a comprehensive data source. In this “chicken or egg” puzzle, the order is obvious: data must drive decision making and without data, it can only be described as guesswork.

5.1 Comprehensive data repository

Documenting potential questions can inform what data a library should collect, but it is

simply impossible to know today what questions will be asked next year or five years from now. If you do not have the data, it will be too late. Face book knows this, Google knows this; it is accepted wisdom in the marketplace. Gather everything you can, even if you do not know what you need it for. Just as e-commerce informed the evolution from a high-maintenance, mediated ILL environment to an unmediated, assembly line workflow, comprehensive data gathering will drive the evolution of cooperative collecting. Information is power and librarians should be the first to recognize this. Unlike the marketplace, libraries have a competing interest between information and privacy, but these two goals need not be mutually exclusive. It is standard practice to gather metrics such as user status (faculty, graduate, etc.), but what does it mean when a given title has been requested three times by a faculty member? Is this item important to faculty as a whole, or was all of this traffic by the same user (either intentionally or unintentionally requested multiple times)? Simple user status does not answer these questions and can instead provide misleading information. It is not useful to know the name of the individual who requested an item, but it is important to know whether traffic is unique. It is also useful to be able to associate users with a community (department, subject area, courses enrolled in or taught), information that is generally lacking in ILL and circulation systems. We may not be able to map trends or push recommendations at this moment, but the collection of data in a central repository will ultimately facilitate a whole host of services and greatly inform collection development decisions. In short, it is possible to retain privacy while storing a unique user credential; anonymity is equivalent to privacy.

5.2 Data Sources

The prospect of cooperative collection must be founded on a reliable resource sharing system, but collection development requires more than just library-to-library transaction data. Certainly it is necessary to be able to assess what each library is borrowing and why, but this is still only one piece of the puzzle. For a data repository to be worthwhile, it needs to ingest and/or link together the silos of information sources both within the library and across campus. Data sources may vary by institution but should include:

• ILL transactions.

• Circulation transactions.

• Online catalog searches, including failed searches.

• E-Proxy logs for access to library resources (who is coming in? from where? for what?).

• Database traffic and associated data (availability may depend on database and vendor).

• Courseware use and resources.

• User demographics.

• Course offerings and enrollment.

• Funding sources.

Figure-3. Pie Chart on normal percentage of ILL in Cooperative collection phenomena

(Source-Google survey)

Data storage is now cheaper than physical storage of library material. Gathering data to inform cooperative collecting will pay off in the end, though the return may not be immediate. Just as it takes money to make money, it takes a store of data to begin making collection decisions. The sooner one begins; the sooner one will have access to valuable information about collections, use patterns, fund management, and user needs.

On the other side Information and communication technology (ICT) has been recently identified as essential in improving communication in learning processes. One benefit of ICT is to reduce information re-entry by linking information between these processes. We use the term “ICT diffusion” to define information and communication technology that has been adopted and transferred by potential users within an organization at the implementation stage. Effective ICT diffusion success could be perceived in terms of factors that influence technology adoption and the way in which successful adoption of technology by potential users within an organization could be maintained. As the national internet infrastructure expands and ICT operating costs decrease (e.g. Internet service cost, hardware, and software costs), the numbers of ICT users in the institutions may increase over the coming years. This reveals several problematic ICT implementation issues. These include:

• Lack of an IT infrastructure;

• Lack of IT staff; investment cost;

• Lack of ICT business requirements;

• Unclear benefits of ICT use; and

• Behavioral barriers

Therefore, these issues should be studied in more detail through identifying drivers and inhibitors of ICT innovation to fully understand how ICT technology is transferred into organizations. This is particularly relevant to the successful expansion and/or deployment of an inter-intranet infrastructure.

6. Conclusion

In current acquisitions, as well, print material still far exceeds digital material in any library’s collection development program. Proper storage and preservation of print collections will continue to be a challenge for research librarians. Off-site and consortia storage arrangements and digital reformatting will provide new tools and options for managing this challenge. The J-STOR project is an excellent model of how new technology and cooperative support can be used to provide new options for access to and storage of scholarly journal back files. Certainly collection management practices and perspectives must change in the face of environmental shifts in information services and higher education. With such changes taking place on their campuses, collection managers, subject specialists, and bibliographers must move from a primarily local, print collection perspective to a broader vision of "knowledge management" — just as they had once been asked to move from "collection development" to

"collection management". Librarians, long knowledgeable of print collections and for the past decade struggling with the implications of the digital information system, should be leaders in organizing information resources in support of the new distributive learning environment in higher education. Librarians must now deliver resources and services online, synthesize and aggregate digital resources, wed print collection management to new storage and electronic access and delivery options.

REFERENCE:• Peter Collins, (2012) "Fear and loathing in cooperative collection development",

Interlending & Document Supply, Vol. 40 Iss: 2, pp.100 – 104• Bartholomew Aleke, Udechukwu Ojiako, David W. Wainwright, (2011) "ICT adoption in

developing countries: perspectives from small-scale agribusinesses", Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Vol. 24 Iss: 1, pp.68 – 84

• Vachara Peansupap, Derek Walker, (2005) "Factors affecting ICT diffusion: A case study of three large Australian construction contractors", Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Vol. 12 Iss: 1, pp.21 – 37

• Joseph J. Branin, (1994) "Fighting Back Once Again: From Collection Management to Knowledge Management," in Collection Management and Development: Issues in an Electronic Era, Peggy Johnson and Bonnie MacEwan, editors, Chicago: American Library Association, pp.xiii.

• Joseph J. Branin, (1993) “Collection Management in the 1990s” (Chicago: American Library Association, pp. ix-xii

• See Edward G. Holley, (1987)"North American Efforts at Worldwide Acquisitions Since 1945”. Collection Management , Summer/Fall Pp. 92

• Mosher, Paul H. (1986) "A National Scheme For Collaboration in Collection Development: The RLG-NCIP Effort," in Coordinating Cooperative Collection Development: A National Perspective, ed. Wilson Luquire, New York: Haworth Press, p21.

• David L. Perkins, (1979) “Guidelines for Collection Development”, Chicago: American Library Association.