Collection Development and Management for 21st Century Library Collections. By Vicki L. Gregory, Chicago: ALA Neal-Schuman, 2019. 2nd ed. 264 p. $79.99 softcover (ISBN 978-0-8389-1712-1).

Vicki L. Gregory is a well-known academic who has written seven other books describing librarianship and electronic and web resources. This review pertains to the second edition of her 2011 landmark textbook, Collection Development and Management for 21st Century Library Collections,1 which had been in good company with Peggy Johnson’s Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management2 and Maggie Fieldhouse and Audrey Marshall’s Collection Development in the Digital Age.3 Providing a thorough introduction on the management and future of library collections, this text offers practical tools and invaluable advice. The content is geared toward students of information science who are new to collection maintenance and collection development. However, this book would also be beneficial for all levels of practitioners. Gregory clearly describes the useful collection development and maintenance processes that all librarians, whether in the collection manager role or not, would find invaluable.

The beginning chapters can be understood as a natural progression of steps through the unique stages of collection development, needs assessment, marketing, collection development policy writing, selecting, acquiring materials, and budgeting. Logically structured in regard to library processes, not by resource type, Gregory’s text uses material format and type as examples rather than the driving force behind the book’s organization. Chapter 1, “The Impact of New Technologies on Collection Development and Management,” gives a quick overview of the variety of forces that drive the changes in library collections’ constitution. Examples include open access serials, self-publishing, and social networking. The “long tail,” which is “the pressure to provide more and different books, serials, and materials in electronic format” has been fostered by the glut of products made available through online shopping on the web (5). The scope of what libraries offer in their collections continues to change, but the processes to select, manage, and review those collections will persist even as the variety of materials continue to evolve.

One main point that Gregory conveys is the intentionality of using data, structured planning, and policy writing in collection development. Ensuring high-quality collections through intentional practices is a major theme of the text. The data from user population studies and collection evaluations significantly impact a library’s decision making. With a disdain for ad hoc, case-by-case resource selections, Gregory reinforces how a data-driven collection development plan can be implemented through community analyses, collection evaluations, and selection criteria. Gregory’s insistence on thoughtfulness bestows on the reader a perspective beyond the library stacks. The reader can see clearly that the collection is meant to serve users with excellent materials that they both want and need.

In addition to the evidence of statistics and numbers, consider also the larger historical context and purpose of libraries and their collections. Matching the depth of her working experience, Gregory commands a strong background in the history of libraries. In chapter 4, “Selection Sources and Processes,” she describes the change in American libraries’ missional emphasis from the nineteenth century model, which sought to gentrify the public through tasteful literature, to a shift in the mid-twentieth century to support the public’s tastes for best sellers and popular magazines (51). A balance between an erudite mission to advance scholarship and a love of learning with the “give ’em what they want” attitude can be found in the variety of collection development policies and selection criteria that are currently in use. This theme is repeated and expanded upon later in the concluding chapter. Gregory revisits the intersection of these two approaches with a call to arms as “librarians’ growing roles as teachers who train users in information literacy and fluency.” By “guiding users to the best-quality materials” the profession propels further into the 21st century (189).

The second half of the book involves collection management in terms of collection maintenance and guardianship. Aspects of collection management are framed through discussions on collection review and evaluation, cooperatives and resources sharing, legal issues, professional ethics, and preservation. Presenting the reader with enough breadth and depth to lay a foundation for these subjects, readers gain an understanding of the topics such as the correct handling of donations, weeding and deselection projects, and book display challenges. Electronic resources present problems involving copyright and preservation. Gregory provides helpful selected readings and references at the end of each chapter to further learning and research. The reader finds a more than adequate framework of support material in the text’s figures and sidebars. Important historical milestones in the profession include excerpts from the Library Bill of Rights and the Marrakesh Treaty. The thoughtful touch of Gregory’s working experiences can be found in the indispensable checklists that include “Tips for a Successful Licensing Agreement” and a vocabulary of “DRM Terms.” Such items are well-suited to be embedded in the text rather than listed as appendices. Items earning a figure number are different: forms, pictures, and charts. Examples include “Figure 5.2 Representative pricing samples for electronic serials” and “Figure 3.7 Sample challenge form.” The appendix is a twenty page “List of Library Vendors: Publishers, Wholesalers, and Vendors.” It is made more usable by grouping the sellers by which type of library would use them.

The activities and discussion questions at the end of certain chapters offer concrete exercises for the reader. Readers are invited to put their newly understood concepts into action by giving them the opportunity to consider how this aspect of a librarian’s work approached in a real-world example. One activity from the “Legal Issues in Collection Development” involves a valuable and desirable gift that the reader is asked to consider declining or accepting (154) that harkens back to the “Acquisitions” subchapter, “Beware of Gifts with Strings Attached” (86-87). Before the comprehensive index is an inspired bibliography organized, alphabetically, by the themes of the book. The themes are not direct chapter titles but certainly would become a reader’s starting point to delve more deeply into ideas that are, in most cases, spread throughout the text. These resources will no doubt be helpful for students preparing for their career and for practicing librarians at many levels serving in a variety of roles.—Emily Szitas (eszitas@iup.edu), Indiana University of Pennsylvania

References

1. Vicki L. Gregory, Collection Development and Management for 21st Century Library Collections: An Introduction (New York: Neal-Schuman, 2011).
2. Peggy Johnson, Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management (Chicago: American Library Association, 2004).
3. Maggie Fieldhouse and Audrey Marshall, Collection Development in the Digital Age (London: Facet, 2011).