Professor Arlene Bielefield, J.D.
Catalog Description
Principles of library collection development and evaluation. Business of library acquisitions; vendors, gift and exchange, cooperative resource sharing. Impact of document delivery and electronic publishing.
Learning Goals/Outcomes
On completion of the course, you should be able to:
- Implement the acquisitions process;
- Develop an awareness of a variety of sources for obtaining library materials;
- Ethically deal with materials vendors;
- Identify and use authoritative review sources and bibliographies;and
- Perform basic collection analysis.
Highlights/ Samples of Course Work: This course gave me an appreciation of the importance in having a comprehensive collection development policy and selection process established within the library system. This insight was magnified when the attempted banning of Brian MacDonald’s In the Middle of the Night occurred in Cheshire, CT while I was taking the course. I learned about the legal and ethical issues of dealing with vendors during the acquisition process. The final project was of great satisfaction to me because I was able to apply all the collection development tools to help a good friend weed through a local university’s nursing program collection.