It can be difficult moving from a process that is governed by one person to one that is governed by committee. The Collection Development Council, or CDC, is coming together very nicely this year. Each person on it tries very hard to look at the University Libraries rather than their own parochial interests. This group is responsible for allocating the collections budget and recommending policies and procedures related to content selection for University Libraries.
This week we spent time looking at possible budget allocations and coming up with a set of recommendations to present to the Dean this week. This is going to be a year in which we are going to have to set some priorities and make some choices. We intend to have several forums, communicate widely, and continue moving towards the notion of "one collection, geographically dispersed."
One thing I did this week was to send a message back to the publishers of the journal Science and tell them that we were not going to pay three or four times that of any of our CIC counterparts for their journal. Penn State is not a consortia and we won't pay like we are. It's unfortunate because it is a wonderful journal, but unfortunately, not for the price we were quoted.
I'll blog about collections, as I blog about technology and management as the academic year progresses. Welcome back, students!