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Collection Development Policy

Collection development is the ongoing process of selecting, evaluating, and maintaining collections of library resources that best meet the information needs of the library’s users within a set budget. Librarians consult with faculty, administrators, staff, and students to ensure that collections continue to support current research and teaching at WashU as well as new models of research and scholarship.

Purpose & Goals of the Collection Development Policy

The collection development policy for WashU Libraries guides decisions regarding the selection, curation, and preservation of its resources; allows for sufficient flexibility to adapt to the evolving scholarly communication ecosystem; and informs the WashU community about the principles and values underlying our collection development activities.

Purpose & Goals of the Collection

The Libraries’ collections are designed to support WashU scholars’ teaching, learning and research needs. In addition, the Libraries cultivate partnerships with other research libraries to extend our users’ access to resources not owned by the Libraries.

Collection Development Priorities

The Libraries’ collections support the information needs of our primary clientele: WashU students, faculty, and staff. We also provide service to alumni, local and visiting researchers, and members of the surrounding community. To the greatest extent possible, our collections are licensed for campus-wide access. The Libraries will monitor and strategically respond to evolving growth areas on campus, reallocating funds from the collections budget to obtain resources in support of new areas.

Scope Statement

This document outlines the broad principles governing collection development at WashU Libraries. Our subject-specific policies and our Special Collections policy provide more details about collection strengths, growth opportunities, and additional considerations.

Principles & Values

Intellectual Freedom

Adherence to intellectual freedom is a fundamental tenet of the Libraries in carrying out their educational mission in a democratic society. We firmly endorse the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions’ (IFLA) Statement on Libraries and Intellectual Freedom.

Diversity

The Libraries are strongly committed to the values of inclusion, diversity, equity, and access (IDEA). Details about how our commitment to incorporating the values of IDEA into collections and services can be found in the WashU Libraries IDEA Statement.

Accessibility

The Libraries strive to make our collections accessible to all users. We will work to identify and remove barriers to the use of our collections and services, ensuring that the technology platforms we invest in follow national standards for accessibility.

Criteria & Strategies

Responsibilities of Librarians & Curators

The Libraries are responsible for developing collections through a combination of selection practices (see II.C “Methods of Acquisition” below for details). Librarians rely on their knowledge of the collections, expertise with collection tools and resources, and understanding of the information and resource needs of our users to develop and maintain the Libraries’ collections. Subject librarians serve as liaisons to WashU’s academic departments. In this role, they are responsible for developing familiarity with the curriculum of their departments and with the relevant parts of the collection that serve their research and teaching needs. Librarians also have the responsibility to keep faculty informed of important changes regarding the collections.

Faculty Input on Collections

The Libraries values the close relationships that faculty have to both collections and their library liaisons. Faculty members are encouraged to participate in collection development through regular consultation with their subject librarian. This contribution to collection development is valuable for the in-depth knowledge that faculty members have of their specific subject areas and broad discipline, as well as their curriculum and research needs. The subject librarian is the contact person for faculty to voice any questions or concerns they may have about the Libraries’ collections and services, or to make suggestions.

Acquisition Methods

The Libraries utilize a variety of methods to acquire the materials needed by our users. This list is not exhaustive, and we are committed to exploring new acquisitions methods and purchasing models that will benefit our learners, researchers, and staff.

A significant portion of the Libraries’ print collections are developed through the use of approval plans. Our approval vendors automatically supply newly published materials that match our specifications. This method saves staff time devoted to selection and processing, while continuously replenishing our core collections. We regularly revisit and assess our approval profiles to ensure that needed research and teaching materials are acquired efficiently and cost effectively, and to ensure inclusion of works by marginalized and/or underrepresented voices.

Librarians submit firm order selections as a means of obtaining titles that fall outside the scope of the approval plan, or to fill user requests. Firm orders are especially important for foreign language materials that are not supplied on approval. Title-by-title selection is necessary to develop a balanced and useful collection, but also the most labor-intensive acquisitions method.

Print and electronic journals and standing orders make up the largest part of the Libraries’ collection budget and are vital to users’ scholarship. Subscriptions are regularly reviewed to ensure that usage justifies continued access and that the subject matter is still relevant to study and research at WashU.

Olin Library is an official depository for publications from the European Union and the U.S. Federal Depository Program (FDLP). In agreement with other Missouri depository libraries, the Libraries have committed to maintaining print holdings on Civil Rights and the Postal Service, as well as presidential administrations from 1953-1974. The Libraries will adapt our government documents collection development strategy as the FDLP transitions from providing print to primarily electronic publications.

Format Considerations

Subject librarians select the format which is best aligned with the needs of their respective departments. In most cases, electronic formats are more accessible to users. Space constraints, costs, and electronic licensing terms are also important factors in format selection. The Libraries are committed to maintaining our print collections, and in some instances, print is either preferable or the only option. Some formats, such as edited scholarly volumes, conference proceedings, or handbooks, lend themselves to electronic formats because users are likely only to need a portion. We tend to buy monographs in print more often than ebooks. Although it is preferable not to purchase a title in both print and electronic formats, in some cases this may be necessary—for example, if image quality is a concern or if the physical object itself has educational value.

Whenever possible, the Libraries will license electronic material for campus-wide access. In addition, our preference is for agreements that exclude digital rights management (DRM), which may limit users’ abilities to download, print, or copy content. However, not all titles can be purchased without DRM. Cost is also a factor when considering licensing options. The Libraries advocate for fair use, privacy, accessibility, and authors’ rights in licensing negotiations.

The Libraries prefer to license streaming videos from commercial vendors rather than directly from filmmakers due to limited means to license and archive media files. Some films are not available to stream due to limited distribution by the studio, filmmaker, or rightsholder. If unavailable from a commercial vendor and needed for course reserve, we provide streaming video for DVDs from our collection, or purchase a DVD and any necessary performance rights to fulfill a streaming request. See Streaming Reserves Policy for details.

The Libraries will consider purchasing datasets that: have applicability to a reasonable number of researchers; are distinct and not repackaged data which is freely available from other sources (unless that packaging provides significant value); provide documentation to facilitate reuse; have licensing that allows the dataset to be shared with the campus community; and adequate, equitable funding is available. See Data Services for details.

The Libraries purchase a variety of formats of materials, as needed by our users. This list is not exhaustive.

Open Access (OA)

The Libraries are committed to the advancement and promotion of OA by helping users discover OA materials in our collection and providing support for new models of open access publishing and dissemination. Our librarians select reliable and relevant OA material for our collections. The Libraries support OA efforts through organizational memberships and subscribe-to-open agreements. Our transformative agreements reduce article processing charges for OA publishing and expand the readership of our scholars’ research, furthering WashU’s mission of knowledge dissemination. The Libraries enter into transformative agreements that are affordable, sustainable, and aligned with the publishing activities of our authors.

Ownership & Consortia Access

Libraries also foster strategic partnerships with other academic institutions to build shared collections and expand access to materials. The Libraries have entered into consortial agreements with MOBIUS, the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA), and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL). Our users benefit from expanded access as they can easily identify, request, and borrow materials in the holdings of other institutions. Our partnerships allow us to reduce unnecessary duplication of efforts and resources. These shared collections also inform decisions on what to acquire and maintain locally. The Libraries frequently review our memberships and roles in such consortia and partnerships to ensure that they are meeting the information needs of WashU researchers.

Collections Management

Gifts in Kind

Gifts can be an important addition to the Libraries’ collections, but we must weigh their potential usefulness against the costs associated with the processing and retention of gifts. Additional factors to consider include potential restrictions or limitations on their use. For more information, please see the Libraries’ Gift Policy.

Preservation

  • Digital Preservation: The Libraries work toward the long-term preservation of and persistent access to the digital assets curated by the Libraries, including digital objects created by the Libraries, objects deposited in the Open Scholarship repository by members of the WashU community, born-digital materials for which the Libraries have accepted a curatorial role, and preservation master digital surrogates of physical library collection material. Digital objects are stored in a manner that is consistent with accepted best practices in the digital preservation community so that materials are findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.
  • Web Archiving: The Libraries capture websites as completely as possible to preserve the functionality of and accessibility to the original content. Top priority is given to websites in the WashU domain, followed by websites that support WashU domain content, complement Libraries collections, capture the WashU community’s response to significant historical events, or contain content produced by the Libraries. Requests are balanced against collecting priorities, available data budget, amount of data needed to capture web content, and technological requirements.

Retention

As stewards of the Libraries’ collections, we are committed to securing long-term, perpetual access to the print and electronic content on which our users depend. The Libraries emphasize perpetual access to core titles and materials used for faculty research. We rely on subscribed content when perpetual ownership is not available or not affordable or for broad coverage of non-scholarly content or subjects that fall outside of primary areas of research and teaching. In addition, we ensure access to valuable resources through memberships, including:

  • Portico and CLOCKSS, which provide perpetual access to e-journals, e-books, and primary source documents, in the event that subscribed titles are no longer available from a publisher or other source.  
  • HathiTrust, a partnership of major academic and research libraries, offers our users access to a comprehensive digital archive of published literature from around the world.
  • Western Regional Storage Trust (WEST), a distributed retrospective print journal repository, ensures that member libraries have long-term access to print.

De-Accessioning

All deaccessioning activities at the Libraries adhere to the language in the collection’s deed of gift or general professional standards of libraries and archives. Four criteria are typically taken into consideration when identifying material for routine deaccessioning:

  • Codition: Damage is so extensive that items cannot be repaired without expensive and time-intensive conservation treatments or cannot be repaired at all. Some examples of this damage include mold, vandalism that renders the content unusable, and large sections of missing pages.
  • Redundancy: Multiple copies of the same item, duplication between physical and digital collections, or between the Libraries’ holdings and those of organizations where we have reciprocal borrowing agreements. All deaccessioning decisions must balance the needs of our community and the sharing agreements with our partners.
  • Out-of-scope: Incomplete serials holdings, low-use items, or titles that are superseded by later editions in the collection. Out-of-scope determinations are based on our core collecting areas and our archival mission.
  • Care: The technologies required to access items are outdated, or there are environmental storage requirements that the Libraries cannot meet.

Items flagged for deaccessioning based on the above criteria will be posted on the Libraries’ website for one month to allow for faculty review and comments before removal from the Libraries’ collections. Retained items will be returned to library stacks after any necessary treatment(s). Deaccessioned materials will be offered to Better World Books (a company that funds literacy projects in the United States and around the world) or similar organizations. Any remaining items will be recycled. Libraries staff may not personally profit from any deaccessioning activities.

Generally, routine deaccessioning activity will not exceed 2% of the total collection size in any given year. Any projects that fall outside the above criteria for “routine deaccessioning” are approved by the Libraries administration in consultation with relevant faculty.