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  4. Think Globally, Act Locally: Electronic Resources and Collection Development

Think Globally, Act Locally: Electronic Resources and Collection Development

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Think Globally, Act Locally.pdf (5.44 MB)
Permanent Link(s)
https://hdl.handle.net/1813/2866
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Articles, Preprints, and Presentations by CUL Staff
Author
Thomas, Sarah
Abstract

Despite numerous cooperative collection development endeavors, the building of library collections has remained a highly individual and local practice. The physicality of bound volumes has posed a distinct limitation on our ability to share collections, although libraries have made huge strides in recent years. Electronic resources and the ability to digitize our physical holdings offer the potential to redirect our investments in collection building to the creation of a global network that would serve an international community of scholars. By facilitating the creation of disciplinary-based portals to knowledge resources, librarians can channel their efforts to the benefit of many without sacrificing the quality of local relationships. To accomplish this, libraries need to develop collectively built and managed web sites that supplant the need for autonomous, selector-created ?webliographies? and that greatly expand the number of sources that can be identified and described. Selectors, freed of the individual responsibility to shoulder the increasingly heavy, and ultimately unsustainable load of tracking a proliferation of resources in a variety of formats and states of publication, can turn their attention to the capture of more elusive, but important, material; to more detailed evaluation of the use of information resources; toward improvements in the user interface of portals; or toward the transformation of scholarly communication, with the discipline-based portal serving as a magnet for attracting new forms of scholarly thought and research.

Date Issued
2002
Publisher
Haworth Press Inc.
Keywords
libraries
•
electronic resources
•
collection development
•
collaboration
Previously Published as
Thomas, Sarah E., "Think Globally, Act Locally: Electronic Resources and Collection Development," Journal of Library Administration, v.36, no.3, (2002) 93-107
Type
article

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