Collection Management. International Yearbook of Library and Information Management 2000/2001

One would expect a volume entitled “yearbook” to be a review, possibly of the past year. This yearbook turns out to be a collection of essays on a particular topic, most of them being a mixture of review and discussion; the topic will change from year to year. This volume, the first in the series, is devoted to collection management. Not only is it a rather odd sort of “yearbook” (why not just a series?), but its claim to be “international” is highly dubious (see below).

It consists of 18 articles and an introduction by the editor – who, since he is described as “general editor” on the dust jacket and spine, though nowhere in the book’s pages, one assumes to be the editor of the series, not just of this volume. The articles are grouped in five sections, nominally concerned respectively with general issues, electronic publications, co‐operative collection management, evaluation and weeding, and preservation and archives. These divisions are artificial and unnecessary: for example, evaluation and weeding are not exactly natural bedfellows, nor are preservation and archives; and several papers could be in a different section.

The volume seems to cover most if not all of the main current issues in collection management, though I would have liked to see something on user‐oriented collecting and the (very difficult) topic of optimising collections based on hard copy, electronic publications in physical form and electronic material accessible online (Chapman touches on this issue but does not develop it). Also, there is a good deal more on academic than on public or special libraries – a reflection of the institutions where the authors are based. Moreover, there is a strong Anglo‐American bias: eight of the authors come from the UK, six from the USA, and six from south and south‐east Asia and New Zealand (where the editor teaches). The bias is slightly compensated for by the presence of articles on serials management in Vietnam and rare books in Shanghai, but the fact that, for example, France has only two entries in the index, Germany one, and Italy and Spain none at all, severely dents the yearbook’s claim to be “international”. (I suppose the more accurate title of “Anglo‐American and East Asian Yearbook” … would look a bit odd). In fact, overall there is a UK bias; whether this makes it more or less saleable to other countries is a moot point.

The articles differ in nature as well as topic. Some have no references at all (Friend on “Policy: politics, power and people”), while others are quite heavily referenced (Feng on “Rare book collections in an electronic environment: Shanghai Library” has over 80 references).

The 12‐page Introduction contains brief summaries of all the articles. It has some nice personal touches, rare in such volumes, but sometimes goes beyond summary into praise, not always justified; whether an author is “ebullient” (Chapman) or an article is “insightful” (Friend) or “challenging” (Roberts) is for readers to decide (and for reviewers to comment on – personally, I found no insights in Friend’s essay, interesting though it is).

Most of my comments up to this point have been rather negative. In fact, none of the papers is a dud, and some are excellent. All are state‐of‐the‐art accounts, ranging from bald routine descriptions to quite extensive discussions of the issues. Daniel Dorner writes on “The blurring of boundaries [between publishers and libraries etc.]”. Fred Friend I have already mentioned. Stephen Roberts, in much the longest paper, deals thoroughly with “Economics and collection management”. Susan Higgins discusses “Information, technology and diversity: censorship in the 21st century” (oddly, she makes no mention of the bias that may be imposed on public library acquisitions by committees). Thomas Leonhardt offers a straightforward account of “Electronic publications” (which defines an e‐book first as a “portable electronic reader” and later as a “digitized book”). Van Son Vu’s piece on “Serials management in developing countries: the case of Vietnam” has almost nothing to do with collection management and, worthy though it is, really has no place in the volume.

John Budd’s chapter on “Access to journal literature in the electronic era” and Liz Chapman’s on “Acquisitions: the emerging electronic paradigm” deal with similar topics, but there is surprisingly little overlap between them; Budd devotes much space to the printed journals crisis, while Chapman is more concerned with processes. I thought her paper one of the best – but nearly choked at her statement that “acquisitions processes came late to automation” (shouldn’t it be the other way round?) when I recalled how we automated acquisitions at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1967. Neither devotes very much attention to the uncertain issues raised by e‐books (a thorough and magisterial review of electronic books is provided by Clifford Lynch (2001)). David Ball and Jo Pye deal with “Library purchasing consortia”. Tezla’s paper on “New operating principles for collecting government documents” is of more specialised interest.

The contributions of Clare Jenkins (“Collection management initiatives in Britain”) and Alicia Wise (“Managing national distributed collections: reflections on the British experience” – a rather humdrum account, in which Morocco makes a surprise appearance near the end) inevitably cover some of the same ground, especially the DNER, but both are well worth reading. (Jenkins, in suggesting that Lamda presents a serious challenge to the British Library’s document supply service, is clearly not aware of the full costs.) Lizanne Payne reviews the situation with regard to “library storage facilities and services” in an interesting article, particularly in her ideas about the future of storage facilities.

Gary Gorman and Ruth Miller provide perhaps the best of all the articles in their “Changing collections, changing evaluation”. This deals with the evaluation of electronic as well as paper materials. They are, however, far too dismissive of user‐centred evaluation; for books, it is possible to study in‐library uses, and easier still to identify reference works that would never be borrowed, and for serials usage data are surely essential. Roy Williams on “Weeding library collections” is another good paper, even though a good deal of it is taken up by summaries of what two previous authors (Slote and Roy) have had to say.

Charles Thomas deals with “Preservation management” fairly thoroughly, an important omission being the principles and criteria of selection for various forms of preservation – or for preservation at all (what a pity that Nicholson Baker’s (2001) diatribe against librarians was not published in time to be covered). Jieyin Feng’s article on Shanghai Library’s plan to digitise the greater part (120,000 volumes) of its rare book collections, as images rather than text, is more interesting than might at first appear. The final chapter, Rachel Lilburn’s “Records acquisition and appraisal in the information age” is, like the paper on government publications, of less general interest.

The book has a good solid permanent appearance – more solid‐looking than necessary for a work that will be out of date in three or four years? – and uses a generous (over‐generous?) 12‐point type with heavy leading. The distinction between main headings (roman) and sub‐headings (italic, same point type) could be clearer. The book bears the signs of very conscientious editorship; I found only one or two misprints. The editor is almost justified in praising the indexer for doing a “splendid job”; unfortunately, he has missed some authors – indeed, some whole pages seem to have been missed (e.g. p. 64). The price of £60 is very fair for a work of this type and size.

No one will want to read everything in this book, but librarians who are concerned with collection management, and many who are not, will find at the least useful overviews of the current situation, especially in the UK, and at best may learn quite a lot. I look forward to further volumes in the series.