Information Alliance
Collection Development Counterparts Meeting - Rugby, TN
September 28, 2001
The Information Alliance held its annual collection development counterparts meeting at Rugby on September 28, 2001. Collection development officers at the three IA institutions facilitated the meeting: Jim Burgett (University of Kentucky), John Haar (Vanderbilt University), and Linda Phillips (University of Tennessee). Disciplines under discussion included Classics (Janice Adlington-VU, Anne Bridges-UT); Women’s Studies (Melinda Brown-VU, Thura Mack-UT, Kandace Rogers-UK); and Government Documents (Sandra McAninch -UK, Janette Prescod-UT, Larry Romans-VU). For the first time catalogers joined us (Jean Wright-VU, Nancy Lewis-UK), and they joined in planning a cooperative government documents cataloging program.
Collection Development Officers
The collection development officers reviewed the terms of a contract offered by ALA Publications for a proposed book they would author on practical issues related to collaborative collection development. ALA has not yet accepted their proposal, but they discussed revisions they would seek to the contract, principally the elimination of liability clauses.
The officers also considered further development of the IRIS serials archive. UT has created a list of cancelled titles offered to the archive by all three libraries, including holdings for each title, and notations of which library agreed to serve as library of record for each title reviewed. The list now includes additional cancelled titles not yet considered, and the libraries will make decisions about these titles as our next step.
Classics
Selectors from UT and VU shared information on programs and materials budgets at their institutions. VU has a larger budget, but UT’s budget is adequate to its needs. More Classics research takes place in other academic departments at UT than at VU. VU has a large religion-theology collection at its Divinity Library, which also supports research and study in Classics. The selectors also compared book and slip coverage on their approval plans.
The two collections have some distinct areas of strength that complement, rather than overlap, each other, and these areas could lend themselves to cooperative acquisitions. UT is stronger in classical Greek archaeology. VU is stronger in ancient philosophy. UT has an interest in Byzantium, which is not an interest at VU.
The selectors will compare holdings and future purchases in epigraphy. Some sets in this area do not need to be duplicated. Selectors will survey holdings and circulation patterns in epigraphy sets at each library and will try to lend volumes to each other, even if they do not generally lend such materials to other libraries. They will contact their counterpart at UK and ask for cooperation in this endeavor.
Women's Studies
Selectors compared budgets and the structures of collections at the three libraries. UT does not have a separate budget for women’s studies. UK recently received a budget line for monographs only. VU has a small budget and a conspectus identifying LC classes specific to women’s studies. At all three libraries the selectors fill in gaps for women’s studies materials in a variety of disciplines.
Women’s studies programs at all three libraries heavily request videos. The selectors discussed exploring whether the libraries could interlibrary loan videos. They also considered how best to promote the IRIS service to educate faculty that microform sets and monographs are available to them through the consortium. They also discussed the possibility of creating a consortial webpage, possibly about statistics on women, and will investigate this further. They would like to have something definite in place by Women’s History Month (March 2002).
Government Documents
Documents librarians and catalogers continued discussion of a cooperative project they had identified earlier: sharing catalog records for pre-1977 items. They determined that each library would be responsible for cataloging materials from designated agencies (UK-Department of Energy, UT-Department of Agriculture, VU-Department of State). They may also jointly purchase catalog records when feasible. Larry Romans and Janette Prescod agreed to develop a set of principles for retrospective cataloging. All three libraries have large collections of uncataloged materials and will therefore focus on cooperative cataloging instead of collection sharing at present. They cannot be sure of the extent of overlap until they catalog these materials.
UK is developing an IRIS archive of Serial Set backfiles. Staff are carefully comparing sets from all three libraries to create a single IRIS set composed of volumes in the best condition. This process may take several years.
The University of Memphis is the regional documents depository
for Tennessee, and UT and VU must first offer withdrawn documents
to Memphis. The librarians agreed that when Memphis rejects documents,
UT and VU will offer them to UK, the Kentucky regional. UT and
VU have already done a great deal of collection swapping to fit
their patrons’ needs, and they will take care not to turn
UK into a storage facility for lesser-used items.
