Collections
There are many writings on the subject of library collections, but few address the underlying concept. Typical definitions in glossaries and handbooks refer to “accumulations” or “sum” of “materials” “owned” or “provided by” a “library” (ALA Glossary and LibrarySpeak). Based on interviews, Lee found several criteria on which both librarians and faculty converged (Lee, 2000), that is, the library’s collection is a selective set of resources, the content of which is considered stable and (relatively) permanent, which are represented in the catalog, and the rights with which to access are managed by library. The faculty interviewed continued to equate co-location of physical materials within the library facilities, if not the specific buildings, to the library’s collections, and did not considered materials held in remote locations or joint repositories as part of their library’s collection. Indeed, the users did not necessarily associate the online resources to their library because they accessed them through separate listings or their own bookmarks (Lee, 2000).
Based on these criteria of “library collections”, how, then, would Open Access fit in? Are OA resources currently considered part of a library’s collection? If not, will they ever be? More broadly, what has been the impact of the Open Access movement and open access resources on library collections, the concept of library collections, and the practice of collection development? How has the impact of OA on collections differed between libraries in the Global North versus the Global South?
Concepts of Library Collections
Michael Buckland examined the overarching roles and scope of collections, describing library collections as “subsets of changing membership drawn from the broader set of potentially collectible materials in order to achieve the goals of the library by facilitating access by the population they serve,” and that the “development of library collections, then, is essentially concerned with the placing in libraries of copies of pre-existing materials. It is, at root, a logistical exercise to improve service” (Buckland, 1989, p. 216).
A key aspect of this concept of collections that is relevant to this chapter is the placement of “pre-existing materials” to facilitate access by the library’s patrons. This concept goes beyond any discussion of “ownership” and gets to the heart of the purpose of the collection. This conceptual understanding of collections could support the inclusion of digital open access materials which are selected based on needs perceived by the librarian. Buckland’s use of “pre-existing materials”, however, contrasts with the changes to the publishing environment in the last twenty years. As libraries have pushed for true reformation of publishing and scholarly communication, especially towards Platinum or “true” OA, some have inserted themselves earlier into the scholarly communication cycle, hosting open access platforms, essentially creating new content. This idea of “flipping” collections will be discussed later in this chapter.
The conception of the collection and its purpose is not only timeless but also universal. Library collections at institutions of higher education serve the same purposes and functions in African nation as in European or American. Ifidon, for example, listed such purposes of African university libraries, notably meeting the academic and research information needs of students and researchers (Ifidon, 1990). Librarians from all parts of the world who have written on collections and collection management issues reference many of the same key concepts and philosophies of collection.
Ownership vs. Access
Traditional understandings or perceptions of library collections have tended to center on availability and “ownership”. Only a few of the faculty users that Lee interviewed understood that not all resources were actually “owned” by the library, whereas most librarians understood the nuances of access and ownership. Questions of ownership versus access have been around for decades associated with interlibrary loan and document delivery and full-text periodical databases extending the availability of resources beyond the walls of the library (Ferguson & Kehoe, 1993; Hawbaker & Wagner, 1996). Then came questions regarding the inclusion of Web sites in the collection (Campbell, 2000; Koehler, 1999; Porter & Bayard, 1999), which has extended to open access resources (Beall, 2009; Collins & Walters, 2010; McCollough, 2017; Schmidt & Newsome, 2007). Lee’s interviews indicated that faculty equated the library’s catalog with its collection. Yet, there are considerable practicalities regarding the inclusion of OA resources in the catalog, notably the sheer number of titles to manage, the vast range of perceived quality, the lack of adequate and accurate metadata, and the risk of impermanence.
As licensed access to digital content effectively supplanted ownership of such content, such resources as ejournals shifted from being treated as ancillary to core resources, and librarians and libraries began to incorporate the content more directly into the information systems provided for users, most commonly the library catalog. Indeed, inclusion in the catalog is, in and of itself, a common criterion of inclusion in a collection, by both users and librarians, as evidenced by Lee’s research, as well as by the criteria for such statistical reporting as the American Libraries survey and the ACRL Academic Libraries Annual Survey which instructs librarians to “…count only those materials that are considered part of your collection…that are cataloged and/or searchable through the library catalog or discovery system,” (ACRL Academic Library Trends and Statistics Survey Editorial Board., 2021), or (prior to 2015) “which has been cataloged, classified, and made ready for use” (emphasis added) (Phan et al., 2014, p. 47). Thus, it is clear that the catalog represents the library’s collection. If it is in the catalog, it is in the collection; conversely, if it is not in the catalog, it is not considered to be in the collection.
Libraries have developed a range of solutions to address resources not outright “owned” or specifically “acquired” but still purposefully provided to patrons. From “union catalogs” of holdings of consortia or otherwise related libraries (Clayton, 1982; Welsh, 1981), progressing to the inclusion of listings of journals from full-text databases (Hawkins, 1999; Hughes & Lee, 1998), through the early days of ejournals (Chrzastowski, 1999) to the inclusion of open access journal listings in e-resource management services (ERMS) (Grogg, 2005), librarians, library staff, and library vendors have developed solutions that range in sophistication and integration with the library search environment. The result is a sort of “E-Resources Access Maturity Model” (Mettler, 2011) of integration solutions. At its lowest level is the “lists of links” to the aggregators’ sites where the library’s selectivity is of the list itself, leaving it to the user to scour the lists. Additional methods to make it easier for patrons to find and access the resources involve more labor or costs. Most often, these solutions result in greater integration of the resources within the library’s own digital environments, to the point that the resources essentially are incorporated into the collection.