Collection Development Policy

­­­ Gellert Library Collection Development Policy

I. Introduction

Collection development is the continuous and systematic process by which libraries select, accept, deselect, and evaluate information resources. This collection development policy articulates the overarching framework that ensures the collections of The Carl Gellert and Celia Berta Gellert Library provide access to knowledge and information resources that meet the curricular, research, and intellectual needs of the Notre Dame de Namur University community in support of the University’s mission and priorities. This policy communicates to the NDNU community, accrediting agencies, donors, and other interested parties the rationale for collection management decisions and the established criteria librarians apply related to collection management. It also includes guidelines related to gifts. The plan should respond to developments in the University’s academic programs, its scholarly community, and best practices and trends in library and information science, and will therefore be reviewed annually for possible revision.

II. Mission Statements

A. University Mission

Founded upon the values of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur and rooted in the Catholic tradition, Notre Dame de Namur University serves its students and the community by providing excellent professional and liberal arts programs in which community engagement and the values of social justice and global peace are integral to the learning experience.

NDNU is a diverse and inclusive learning community that challenges each member to consciously apply values and ethics in his or her personal, professional, and public life.

B. Library Mission

The Carl Gellert and Celia Berta Gellert Library at Notre Dame de Namur University provides access to knowledge and information resources for students, faculty, and staff to facilitate multimodal instruction, knowledge development, scholarly communication, creativity, and cultural transmission.

III. Collection Overview

The Carl Gellert and Celia Berta Gellert Library serves as the University’s knowledge center by providing access to information resources that support the curricular, research, and intellectual needs of the NDNU community.

Online collections include licensed subscription databases of electronic books, journals, newspapers, videos, and other information resources. The majority of the Library’s subscription databases provide full-text access to articles, ebooks, and other media.

The Library increases its access to information through cooperative arrangements with other institutions. The University’s membership in the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC) significantly enhances the information resources available to the NDNU community. To further expand access to information resources, the Library participates in interlibrary loan services that allow patrons access to materials the Library does not currently hold. The Library’s database directory also facilitates access to open access directories and open educational resources (OER).

IV. Primary Patron Base

The Library’s primary patron base is comprised of the current students, faculty, and staff of NDNU, on-site and remote. The Library is bound by agreements with vendors and publishers and as such cannot provide access to licensed materials to external patrons.

V. Collection Development Principles and Objectives

The principles of intellectual freedom are the foundation of NDNU’s collection development activities. As a free and open forum for information and ideas, the Library adheres to the policies in the Library Bill of Rights and the Intellectual Freedom Principles for Academic Libraries set forth by the American Library Association. As such, the Library provides access to information resources that support the information needs of all members of the University community. The Library challenges censorship and builds balanced collections that provide open access to information resources representing a broad variety of perspectives and ideas. NDNU librarians uphold the values and ethical principles promulgated in the American Library Association Code of Ethics.

Collection development efforts are focused on advancing the University’s mission of academic excellence by serving the information needs of the Library’s primary patron base of current NDNU students, faculty, and staff. The main objective is to build collections that support and enrich the University’s liberal arts and professional studies programs and anticipated future programs. Another objective is to enrich collections that advance the University’s mission and core values related to global peace, social justice, diversity, community engagement, and the ethical principles of the academic disciplines of NDNU. By following this Collection Development Policy, the Library’s collections should encourage individual research interests, creativity, and the discovery of new ideas.

Library resources are selected in formats that facilitate accessibility by the greatest possible number of Library patrons. As part of the Library’s continued advancement efforts, new technologies for accessing information content will be adopted when fiscally prudent, in ethical alignment with the University and Library’s mission and the Hallmarks, and when such media become industry standard best practice.

VI. General Selection Criteria and Guidelines

The scope of the Library’s collection accommodates the full range of NDNU’s academic programs. The breadth and depth of the collection in specific subject areas is developed at a level of scholarly complexity commensurate to the degree level offered by the University. The collection levels used as guidelines are defined in The Guidelines for the Formulation of Collection Development Policies (Perkins, ed., 1979). The Gellert Library collects works that meet its general selection criteria and fall into the instructional level and above in the broad academic disciplines of business, education, and psychology. These acquisitions should represent the geophysical distribution of NDNU students and support the local needs of the organizations they are.

When making selection decisions, the librarians consult multiple review sources. A primary scholarly review sources utilized is Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, a publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries. Librarians also collaborate with faculty colleagues to benefit from their subject matter expertise and align the Gellert collection with students’ curricular needs.

A. General Criteria for Selection

1. Content

• Supports students in completing course learning objectives and complements course design and instructional needs of faculty.
• Cultivates scholarship and research in order to enhance teaching.
• Supports the curricular offerings and licensing standards of professional associations and accrediting bodies, especially by maintaining currency.
• Contributes to a balanced collection representing a variety of viewpoints, particularly by including authors of a variety of genders, age ranges, abilities, and racial/ethnic identities.
• Promotes the University’s mission and core values related to community engagement, global peace, diversity, and social justice.

2. Educational Level

• Supports the liberal arts and professional programs at a level of scholarly complexity commensurate to the level of degree offered by the University.
• Materials developed for primary and secondary educational settings may be acquired to support program learning outcomes in the School of Education.

3. Medium

• Is electronically or remotely accessible to the greatest number of Library patrons possible.
• Compatible with standard and commonly available hardware and software in libraries and on computer networks available to students, including the proxy servers that facilitate off-campus/remote access to the Library catalog and licensed holdings.
• Retains stability and currency.
  • Evidence must exist that the publisher/producer plans to regularly update the material (e.g., forthcoming editions and revisions should be accessible, when possible under existing licenses).

4. Quality

• Meets or exceeds standards of authority, comprehensiveness, timeliness, and validity.
• Meets or exceeds standards of organization and is well presented with easily navigable and well-functioning supporting systems (e.g., table of contents, index, illustrations, bibliography, and appendices).

5. Relation to Collection

• Is cross-disciplinary and has wide potential use by Library patrons in curricular and extracurricular or professional settings.
• Broadens knowledge of diversity by representing authors in a variety of genders, age ranges, abilities, and racial/ethnic identities.
• Offers new perspectives on subjects in comparison to items owned or licensed.

B. Materials Not Actively Selected

• The Library does not actively select resources that lack immediate or secondary relevance to the fields of study facilitated by NDNU degree programs.
• The Library does not actively select works in print (including monographs, reference works, rare books and archival manuscripts; periodicals and newspapers; and maps and atlases, etc.) or other physical media.
  • A limited number of commonly used reference works and handbooks in print are held in the Academic Success Center in Campus Center 2 for on-campus use. These items are not available for check-out due to limited resources.
• The Library does not actively collect textbooks.
  • The Library does not have a circulating physical collection and cannot store or distribute print textbooks.
  • Recent developments in textbook publishing models make institutional licenses for digital versions of textbooks inaccessible or prohibitively expensive. Lower-cost, time-limited individual licenses are increasingly available.
  • The Library actively encourages faculty to select OER for required reading whenever possible to reduce students’ financial burden. The Library actively researches OER and zero textbook cost (ZTC) models.