Collection Development

The Harrisburg University Library is flexible and dynamic, changing with University curriculum. We encourage all members of the University to participate in the health of the library's collections by requesting material befitting current course requirements. The Collection Development policy explains how Library staff makes final decisions regarding purchasing material for the library, and provides insight into the business of publishing and selling to academic libraries.

Page Contents:

• Request New Material
• Selection Criteria
• Print Free Library

Request New Material

Faculty may recommend material for the Library to purchase at any time. Individual eBooks and other non-subscription items that cost less than $500 may be purchased immediately if the budget allows. Subscription requests such as databases and journal subscriptions are added to a "wish list" and evaluated for content quality, relevance to the curriculum, uniqueness of content compared to materials already in the library collection, and cost. In some cases a free trial may be required to get feedback about the resource before a purchase decision can be made. Subscriptions that are not added in the year they are requested will be re-evaluated in subsequent fiscal years. For more information, see the Library's Collection Development Policy.

Selection Criteria

The Library's budget is limited and all new purchase requests are submitted to a vetting process. The following general criteria are used when deciding whether to add a resource to the collection:

• Relevance and importance of the subject matter to the university’s curriculum and educational goals.
• Depth and breadth of the resource as compared to those already in the collection.
• Quality of the resource including level of scholarship and reputation of the author, publisher, and other producers of the material.
• Discoverability, usability, and accessibility of the material.
• Availability of an institutional license.
• Total cost including start-up fees and annual maintenance fees.

Consideration is given to the essential resources of each discipline and the size of the population being served, so that programs with a relatively small number of faculty and students are not disadvantaged.

Print Free Library

We are working toward eliminating print books from the Library. Going forward, the Library will acquire resources only in electronic format. The reasons for this are as follows:

• The library has limited space and areas taken up by partially empty bookshelves can be repurposed for more vital services.
• The existing print book collection is rarely used.
• The expenses associated with retaining a print book collection - including cataloging, checkout software and equipment, periodic shelf checks, and interlibrary loan lending - outweigh the staff's capacity to maintain the collection appropriately.