Discusses collection development policy as means to express and systematize guidelines for collection building that fulfill three basic functions: the referential, the generative, the rhetorical. Division of policy into subject categories, and use of "collection levels" to rank the collection and collecting effort for each subject are…

Studies characteristics of a multilateral cooperative selection program for small rare book collections and describes success of such a program at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and University of North Carolina-Greensboro. Highlights include five guidelines as prerequisites to formal agreement and a cooperative collection development…

Discusses references collections in academic libraries and offers guidelines for placing materials in a reference collection that focus on their suitability for true reference functions and the expected frequency of use. Problems with poorly managed collections are discussed, and the importance of selection policies and weeding are emphasized. (37…

Urges the research library community, in which ownership is traded for access and competition for cooperation, to take concerted action to survive declining resources and the impact of electronic information technology. Concrete steps that can be taken toward contributing to a new world of scholarly communication are suggested. (Contains 12…