I am pleased to report that this has been a wonderfully productive year for the ALL-SIS Collection Development Committee. After reviewing the committee charge, we decided to accomplish three major projects in the year and to explore other potential projects, some of which have begun to bear fruit.
Our first major project was the annual updating of collection development librarian contact information for each academic law library. ALL-SIS maintains a password protected repository of this information (available to AALL members only) to allow collection development librarians across the country easy access to one of the most valuable resources available - the advice of an experienced colleague. This project was undertaken by Jane Woldow, Casey Duncan, and Ted McClure in conjunction with a second major project, the updating of the academic library collection development policy database. Both the contact information repository and policy database are hosted on the ALL-SIS Collection Development Committee web site, http://aallnet.org/sis/allsis/committees/colldev/index.asp.
Not only did this trio work to complete the two projects described above, they also integrated an additional element of data collection in this year’s work. The committee agreed to begin attempting to collect information from each academic library focusing on the types of collection development tools and services employed. As of the writing of this report, all the data has been collected, and compilation of the data for inclusion on the committee web site has begun. Many thanks to Jane, Casey and Ted for their hard work!
A third major project undertaken by the committee this year was the transformation of resource lists created by three of last year’s committee members into useful resource pages for the committee web site. Karen Nuckolls, Sara Repinski, and Marlene Harmon each worked to gather lists of online resources useful to collection development librarians. Those resources have been annotated, edited, and should appear on the committee site prior to this summer’s annual meeting. This project and the final project described below share a common goal which is to provide easy access to as many valuable collection development resources as possible with the hope that both newer and more experienced collection development librarians will benefit.
As chair, I worked on a fourth and final project that serves as a companion effort to the resource list described above. I collected the links for all available academic law library RSS feeds for new acquisitions and added them to the collection development committee site. The results of that effort can be found at http://aallnet.org/sis/allsis/committees/colldev/acq_rss.asp. My hope is that collection development librarians will use feed readers to subscribe to some or all of the listed feeds. Details of other libraries’ new acquisitions can then be delivered to the librarian in his or her reader for consideration and review. Because one of the most challenging elements of collection development work is making sure you haven't missed purchasing new scholarship in areas critical to your school’s curriculum, I hope this resource will benefit others currently working in this area.
Other projects still in working phases include: exploring the “greening” of collection development; developing a collection of discard policies with the potential unifying effort providing discarded law books to organizations in need of such books; and collaborating with TS-SIS in the continued effort to gather collection development information that is also critical to librarians in technical services.
The final item I want to note is the 2009 ALL-SIS Collection Development Roundtable theme. This year’s roundtable is unofficially titled “Making the Cut: Collection Development in the Face of Shrinking Budgets.” We will be joined by Amanda Runyon and Leslie Street, who have studied (and continue to study) patterns in cancellations in law libraries. Amanda and Leslie will begin our roundtable with a brief discussion of their findings, and we will then move on to an open discussion of strategies for making difficult collection development decisions during a period of reduced acquisition budgets. I look forward to a robust and insightful conversation and hope that everyone interested in contemporary collection development will join us.