This document covers the first year-and-a-half of the Cornell University Libraries' Project for Collection Development and Management and as such is primarily a statement of the issues that the the Library faced and the investigative design that Edelman proposed to address them. The issues-- decline in acquisitions rates, concern over methodology for funds allocation, library space-- will seem remarkably contemporary. Twenty-five years on, readers will be struck by the writers' confidence that all research library activity derived from the collections and that their description, evaluation and planning would, necessarily, improve services.