digital collection development
In Building Library Collections: The Horse is Riding Us, Milton Wolf discusses how collection development as one of librarys' core services, with the introduction of digital information, has become
dangerously hijacked by the publishing industry. Essentially, by buying and/or accessing digital information in bulk, in the form of subscription databases provided by publishers we have surrendered selection to the corporate parties. By doing so we are compromising our commitment to providing unbiased and complete resources on a given topic. I think of this as a digital equivalent to the concern that big publishing has made it so easy for libraries to purchase from them, that the alternate views of the free press are not getting library facilitated exposure as they should. Wolf quotes John Berry Barlow: “Librarians are the content advocates.” And finishes that “librarians are not doing a very good job at advocating” when it comes to digital information.
Wolf, Milton T. (June 2003). “Building Library Collections: The Horse Is Riding Us!” Journal of Educational Media & Library Services 40(4):429-37.
