Selecting and Managing Electronic Resources: A How‐to‐do‐It Manual for Librarians (rev. ed.)

Citation

Pancheshnikov, Y. (2007), "Selecting and Managing Electronic Resources: A How‐to‐do‐It Manual for Librarians (rev. ed.)", Collection Building, Vol. 26 No. 3, pp. 94-94. https://doi.org/10.1108/01604950710761689

V. Gregory, Professor and Director of the School of Library and Information Science at the University of South Florida in Tampa, revised the first edition of her book that was published under the same title by Neal‐Schuman Publishers in 2000. The new edition was prepared with the assistance of A. Hanson, Director of the Lois de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute at the University of South Florida.

The second edition of this book retains its practical value and comprehensive coverage of issues relevant to the management of all types of electronic resources, including books, journals, collections of materials offered by aggregators and web sites. It consists of eight chapters that discuss collection development policies, selection criteria and the selection process, budgeting and acquisitions, organization and access, evaluation and assessment, digital rights management and intellectual property, preservation issues and the future of selecting and management of electronic resources.

The author indicates in the preface that the basic steps of collection development in the electronic age remain fundamentally the same and include the assessment of users needs, evaluation of the existing collections and the selection and acquisition of new resources. The organization of the book and the content of most of the chapters in many respects are consistent with this approach. The author draws attention to the importance of collection policies for electronic resources and provides concrete guidelines for different types of policies. The discussion of the selection process includes a description of needs assessment. The chapter on evaluation and assessment describes areas of data collection, various techniques and activities, as well as tips on managing an evaluation project.

The traditional approach to collection management is combined with the discussion of issues specific to the management of materials in an electronic format. Technological issues are addressed in every chapter, specifically in the context of selection, budgeting and bibliographic control. Separate detailed chapters deal with licensing and preservation.

The major revisions of this edition include a completely updated chapter on the organization of and access to electronic resources, a revised and renamed chapter on digital rights management and intellectual property, a new section on institutional repositories included in the chapter on preservation, and an updated bibliography.

The book contains numerous checklists and worksheets. It can be recommended as an essential publication to librarians involved in the management of electronic resources in all types of libraries, as well as to library school students studying collection management.