Emerging Patterns of Collection Development in Expanding Resource Sharing, Electronic Information, and Network Environment presents readers with the most important and relevant collection development and networking issues facing the library community today. Presented to encourage librarians and students to continue investigation and discussion of these critical issues, this book explores the relationship between electronic resources, resource sharing, and collection development from the perspectives of librarians, vendors, and network administrators. Along the way, readers learn how to save precious budgetary dollars and improve collections by utilizing resource-sharing technology to provide library users with access to information.

A particularly enlightening study included in Emerging Patterns of Collection Development in Expanding Resource Sharing, Electronic Information, and Network Environment shows how Louisiana State University Libraries, wrestling with the issue of ownership versus access, cancelled $446,000 of subscriptions and offered to purchase articles from these cancelled journals for faculty and graduate students upon request. Exactly how LSU saved 90 on the 20 most frequently accessed titles and how they decided which titles to cut are thoroughly examined. Other critical advice and guidance is given to readers, as the book:

• presents 8 vital elements to the design of collection development policies
• defines 10 types of resource sharing
• provides 10 recommendations to improve resource sharing during the transitional period from paper to electronic format
• shows 6 models of database access and document delivery links
• explains how libraries can survive, not in spite of, but because of, technology
• presents a study of “friendly” and “predatory” periodicals and shows how to use price histories as a means of making subscription decisions
  
  Emerging Patterns of Collection Development in Expanding Resource Sharing, Electronic Information, and Network Environment discusses the changing role of collection development in light of trends in information access and delivery. How libraries are responding to the fiscal challenges and how their collection development policies are helping define the infrastructure of information services in the future are important issues to administrators, librarians, and students alike.