Building an Electronic Resource Collection: A Practical Guide (2nd edition)

The first edition of Building an Electronic Resource Collection, published in 2002, was quickly hailed as an essential guide to the subject, mapping the electronic resources landscape with clarity and providing many practical outlines for decision making at all stages of the electronic collection's life‐cycle. The first edition had the virtues of being written for a wide audience comprising not only information professionals and students but also publishers and vendors wishing to understand the challenges and complexities of electronic resources collections. It successfully combined an extended, helpfully structured survey of electronic resources and the complexities of their supply chains with a series of case studies, models and blueprints covering the essential management topics. The need for a second edition within three years of the first is justified by the rapid pace of change that has caused formerly separate fields such as digital libraries and e‐learning to merge. This has prompted the inclusion of new sections covering Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) and the software needed to manage reading and resources lists.

The same overall structure of the first edition is retained, opening with an initial definition of electronic resources and a discussion of the reasons for purchasing them under licence. An extended section follows – covering nearly a fifth of the book's length – that is carefully structured to analyse and explain the issues that characterise, and contribute to the complexities of, electronic resources collection management practice. This has been updated to include notes on the potential for institutional repositories, which could form a major growth area should the Open Access movement displace the current journal publishing status quo. In this second edition, the sections that survey the wide‐ranging nature of electronic resources again include brief examples of access and use scenarios (set off from the main body of text in a different boldface font for emphasis) that helpfully illustrate, in plain terms, the main points under discussion.

A third section entitled “E‐books and e‐journals” addresses the specific problems and benefits that arise from these otherwise apparently simple electronic analogues of their print counterparts. This includes brief discussion of the emergence of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) as further evidence of the way in which the electronic journal article is becoming ever more deeply embedded into the learning and teaching process, for direct delivery to the user at the specific point of need. The example of VLEs is moreover highly representative of the book's fundamental approach. VLEs are cited as another example to support a central theme introduced early in Chapter Two, namely that electronic resources frequently separate data from the interface or delivery mechanism. This is the clearest distinction that characterises e‐resources as so different from print counterparts, and explains many of the problems and issues (as well as benefits) that are consequently encountered when building or maintaining an electronic resources collection. The separation of data and interface is crucial to an understanding of the complexities of the electronic journal supply chain, for example. And the VLE and similar “course rooms” models only further serve to disengage the electronic journal article from the context or “envelope” of its original serial publication.

Next comes a step‐by‐step approach to the entire life cycle of electronic collection development. This will be for many readers the practical heart of the book, with its focus on evaluation and procurement of electronic resources, to which the previous chapters have formed an essential prelude. Section five covers delivery, and the associated discussions and checklists provided are not simply confined to the obvious target – the end‐user. Instead, the vital aspect of the inter‐relationship between the electronic collection development process and the various “stakeholders” within the organisation is outlined and analysed. These include the various experts in technology, contracts, subject, user (reader) services and the new body of “learning technologists”. The point is also well made that in many institutions, such responsibilities and job functions frequently do not reside in easily identifiable compartments, but may instead be covered only by relatively few individuals, or widely dispersed across the organisation, making communications more difficult. A select glossary and bibliography (containing references to material published up to and including 2004) follows.

The updating work for the second edition of Building an Electronic Resource Collection has been careful to retain the strengths of the original structure by selective extension. Some 20 pages have been added, which preserves the accessible, compact format of the original. However, there are a few omissions that represent missed opportunities for updating the subject matter. The key theme of electronic resources' inherent separation of data from interface is actually exemplified by the growing use of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and yet no sustained discussion or examples are included for this highly significant technology, nor any index entries for XML, despite passing references in the text. The authentication section in the landscape chapter is otherwise admirable in identifying key access control methods, but could additionally have noted the momentum building behind such highly significant “devolved” or “federated administration” authentication initiatives as those represented by AthensDA in the UK and the Shibboleth project in the USA. Another minor factual blemish: since 2003, Reuters now distributes its archival news under the Factiva joint venture with Dow Jones – this has not been updated in the new edition.

In general, the second edition successfully incorporates recent changes to the electronic resources landscape whilst retaining the strengths and virtues of the first. These include its successful organisation of the subject matter and the overall approach to the topic – which remain a model of clarity. Building an Electronic Resource Collection in this updated second edition remains one of the best, if not the best, guide of its type, and can be unhesitatingly recommended not only for the quality of its mapping of the electronic resources terrain, but also for its invaluable checklists and the wealth of professional experience that it affords information professionals involved with collection development.