Library collection development is the process of meeting the information needs of the people (a service population) in a timely and economical manner using information resources locally held, as well as from other organizations.
Collections are developed by librarians and library staff by buying or otherwise acquiring materials over a period, based on assessment of the information needs of the library's users. In addition to ongoing materials acquisition, library collection development includes:
- the creation of policies to guide material selection
- replacement of worn or lost materials
- removal (weeding) of materials no longer needed in the collection
- planning for new collections or collection areas
- cooperative decision-making with other libraries or within library consortia
Famous quotes containing the words library, collection and/or development:
“A man’s library is a sort of harem.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Psychobabble is ... a set of repetitive verbal formalities that kills off the very spontaneity, candor, and understanding it pretends to promote. It’s an idiom that reduces psychological insight to a collection of standardized observations, that provides a frozen lexicon to deal with an infinite variety of problems.”
—Richard Dean Rosen (b. 1949)
“The work of adult life is not easy. As in childhood, each step presents not only new tasks of development but requires a letting go of the techniques that worked before. With each passage some magic must be given up, some cherished illusion of safety and comfortably familiar sense of self must be cast off, to allow for the greater expansion of our distinctiveness.”
—Gail Sheehy (20th century)