Introduction and Purpose
This document is intended to provide guidelines and principles for the management of library collections including evaluation, selection, acquisition, maintenance and deselection. Materials in the library collection support the mission and values of W&M Libraries, which in turn supports the vision, mission and values of W&M. W&M Libraries supports and abides by the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights, Intellectual Freedom Principles for Academic Libraries, Freedom to Read Statement and Freedom to View Statement.
The following policy applies to collections located at the Swem Library, Chemistry Library, Physics Library, VIMS Hargis Library and the Learning Resource Center. The Wolf Law Library and the McLeod Business Library are independently managed and funded by their respective schools, and their individual missions necessitate different selection criteria. For more information, visit the Law Library website and the Business Library website.
Mission & Values of W&M Libraries
We support and enhance teaching and research, and foster intellectual curiosity, creativity and lifelong learning.
Our Values
- Belonging. We embrace equity, diversity, and inclusion. We strive to create a culture where all individuals feel welcomed, included and represented.
- Curiosity. We are committed to learning. The libraries are places to discover, play, create, connect and build community.
- Equitable Access. Access to information is a human right. We advocate removing barriers to information and creating new pathways to discovery.
- Flourishing. People are our greatest strength. We invest in the personal and professional growth of our staff and promote a work environment built on trust and collegiality.
Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Statement
We are committed to fostering an environment where diversity, inclusion and equity are viewed as fundamental to our mission and integral to our service model on campus and in the broader community. We believe an environment that is open and welcoming to all patrons is crucial to fulfilling the research, teaching and service mission of the university. We strive to create a climate of belonging, which we believe promotes self-agency, participation, collaboration and innovation.
Intellectual Freedom
We uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and resist all efforts to censor library resources. We respect, within the limits of the law, each library user's right to privacy and confidentiality with regard to information sought or received and resources consulted, acquired or transmitted.
Funding
The collections budget is the primary source of funding to support library collections. This budget is managed by the Associate Dean of Collections & Content Services, while final authority for all expenditures from this budget resides with the Dean of University Libraries. In addition to the collections budget, the library has expendable and endowment funds through the W&M Foundation and the Board of Visitors. These funds often contain guidelines on spending, such as format or subject, to align with the donor’s wishes, and are intended to enhance, not replace, the collections budget.
Responsibility for Selection
Multiple positions coordinate to support collection selection:
- As with funding, final authority for all collection decisions resides with the Dean of University Libraries.
- However, that authority is generally delegated to the Associate Dean of Collections & Content Services, who is responsible for general oversight of collections purchases and negotiating contracts while coordinating feedback and insight from professional librarians and other library staff.
- The Collection & Discovery Librarian is responsible for electronic subscription renewals, management of approval plans and general support of collection purchases.
- In addition, each academic department is assigned a librarian or archivist as a liaison, and these liaisons work closely with the departments to ensure the library collections are supporting the current and upcoming curriculum and research needs of the departments.
General Selection Criteria
General Selection
The following are the main criteria used during the selection process for all materials, including media and emerging formats. This list is not intended to be exhaustive, merely to show the wide range of considerations that affect selection and purchase of materials for the library collection.
- As a centrally funded entity, W&M Libraries purchases materials for campus-wide use. We do not purchase or subscribe to resources that are limited to a single or small group of users.
- As a liberal-arts institution, W&M Libraries' collections must be broad and interdisciplinary to support current curricular needs, with representation from a wide range of subjects, languages, viewpoints and countries of origin. Titles may be purchased to fill collection gaps or provide balance to our holdings on a particular subject.
- As a doctoral institution, W&M Libraries must also provide deep collections to support graduate instruction and researcher needs. This requires more concentrated collection development in the relevant subject areas, including specialized monographs and extensive journal subscriptions, either print or online.
- In all purchasing decisions, the library will consider currency, relevance, publisher and author reputation, lasting research value, accuracy, literary merit and overall quality of the title or collection.
- Overall cost will be considered, along with purchasing method (owning vs. subscription), terms and conditions and predicted cost per use.
- W&M Libraries maintains an approval plan specifically for faculty publications, but if there are any we do not currently own, we encourage a request to be submitted for the title to be purchased.
- All available formats will be considered, but final selection will be dependent upon specific intended use of the material, cost and patron preference, among other considerations.
- Titles are not automatically replaced after being withdrawn due to damage or loss. Repurchase is only considered if the title still holds compelling value for the current curricular and/or research needs of the university.
- Duplicate copies of print materials are not often purchased, except for high demand items like items on course reserves. Similarly, although multiple simultaneous user ebooks are generally preferred, costs often limit us to selecting single user copies unless we anticipate high demand.
- As a public research institution located in a historic area, we will occasionally purchase items that support local interest and history, rather than specifically for teaching and research.
Faculty/Researcher requests:
All members of the W&M community can request titles to be added to our collection; however, priority consideration is given to faculty and researcher requests that support current curricular or research needs. W&M Libraries maintains a wish list for larger journal subscriptions and database purchases. Faculty can request an item be added to this list through their liaison.
Standing Orders/Approval Plans
W&M Libraries reduces the need for individual title selection by collection specialists and seeks to maintain balance when purchasing for the overall collection by maintaining several approval plans. These plans use selection profiles leveraging facets such as publisher, discipline, audience, authorship, etc. Approval plans are reassessed as necessary to ensure they support our collections needs.
Course Reserves/Textbooks
Materials can be purchased for course reserves that would not normally be purchased for the general collection, including textbooks. However, there are challenges associated with textbooks as a format that are described in greater detail in our Statement on Textbooks in the Library Collection.
Additional Criteria for Electronic Collections
Electronic collections are considered for selection using the same general criteria as physical collections, but with the addition of the following parameters:
Remote availability
Preference is given to platforms that integrate into the university’s existing single sign-on system. This allows for remote access to the materials, while limiting the amount of personally identifiable information shared with the vendor.
Accessibility
All library users should have equitable access to information. As such, electronic platforms should support all assistive technology consistent with the Web Accessibility Initiative Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 AA. In addition, vendors should be willing to provide a current and accurate Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) to demonstrate compliance. Existing platforms that do not meet these standards may be targeted for cuts, and new platforms may be removed from consideration of purchase.
Vendor Support
Both the quality and the availability of support offered by the vendor will be taken into consideration. Vendors that have a consistent record of support will be given preference, with a specific focus on the availability of after-hours and weekend support.
Usage statistics
The library continually assesses our subscriptions to ensure they are still pertinent and useful. To best facilitate this work, we preference vendors who support COUNTER 5 SUSHI.
Long Term Access
Access to electronic items can either be attained through subscriptions or perpetual purchases. As our budget allows, we prefer purchasing perpetual access to materials that we assess to have enduring research value.
Simultaneous user access
The number of simultaneous users who can access a particular item, such as an ebook, can greatly increase the cost of purchase, but also affect the usability of an item intended for reserves or other class use. The intended use of an item will be taken into consideration when deciding between these options.
Interlibrary Loan rights
W&M Libraries enthusiastically participates in resource sharing initiatives worldwide. In support of this, electronic materials with terms and conditions that allow for interlibrary loan use are preferred.
Text and Data Mining
Electronic subscriptions and purchases that allow text and data mining for non-commercial use by our researchers and students are preferred.
Other technical concerns
All electronic resources must obtain approval from W&M IT before purchase. As such, any platform or subscription that fails to gain IT approval for any reason or loses IT approval after purchase due to security or other concerns will not be made available. In addition, if there are any other technical issues or concerns, access may be halted or the collection not purchased.
Software
W&M Libraries does not purchase software. For individual or group software purchases, please contact Campus IT.
Demand-Driven Acquisition
To augment title selection by staff, the library makes use of electronic demand-driven acquisition plans. These plans load item records for an entire collection of ebooks, and then trigger purchases of individual titles based on user interest. This allows our collections to meet immediate user needs, and our librarians can assess purchases and fill in any gaps to ensure inclusive and equitable content.
Cooperative Collection Development
W&M Libraries is a member of several consortia which negotiate group discounts for and/or shared access to electronic collections. These include The Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA), The Center for Research Libraries (CRL), Lyrasis, and Virginia Research Libraries (VRL). W&M Libraries will leverage all possible consortia options before negotiating terms on our own. Cooperative purchases through VIVA and VRL seek to reduce overall state spend for resources across Virginia, but may also reduce flexibility for each individual institution.
Datasets
Commercial datasets may be purchased by the library under the following limited circumstances:
- The dataset must have broad curricular and/or research interest and be available for use by researchers across campus.
- The library will not purchase datasets for a single researcher or team, for a specific project or for a limited term.
- Preference is given to datasets that are accessible online, rather than stored on-site.
- No datasets that are purchased by W&M Libraries can be restricted by school or department.
- Preference is given to standard formats that do not require specific software to access. If software is necessary, the interface must meet the accessibility requirements required of all electronic resources and offer ease of use.
- Joint purchases between the library and researchers or departments are strongly encouraged, although all previous considerations are still applied.
Gifts/Donations
Monetary
W&M Libraries' collections benefit substantially from the generous support of our donors. Visit our page on giving opportunities for more information.
Donation of materials: General Collections
Due to staffing and space constraints, the libraries are extremely selective about accepting donations of materials. Please refer to our book donation policy related to the general collections for more information.
Donation of materials: Special Collections
If interested in donating rare books or other unique/special materials to Swem Library, please contact the Special Collections Research Center at spcoll@wm.edu or 757-221-3090.
Weeding/deselection
Print materials
Items in the main print collection are usually permanently removed only under the following circumstances:
- Damaged: any item that is damaged beyond reasonable repair.
- Out of date or inaccurate: items that are out of date, have been found to contain inaccurate information or have been superseded by a newer version.
- Relevance: if substantial changes are made to the university curricula, and there is no compelling secondary justification for keeping the material, it may be withdrawn.
- Duplicates: if duplicate copies have been purchased for use with course reserves, only a single copy will be added to the general collection after it has been removed from reserved use.
- Replaced by digital access: items that have been replaced by appropriate digital surrogates and are owned, not subscribed to.
Retention Commitment for physical materials
Through VIVA, W&M Libraries is a member and retention partner of the Eastern Academic Scholars Trust (EAST). The library also has current retention commitments through VIVA for selected VHS titles, and through the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL) for a selection of print journals, government documents and some reference works. Any titles committed as part of these partnerships will be retained for the length of the agreement even if otherwise eligible for deselection, with the sole exception of damaged items.
Electronic subscriptions
Library staff cyclically analyze electronic journals and subscription collections. Electronic subscriptions may be canceled due to low use, high cost per use, duplication of key titles in other electronic collections, unmanageable costs, misalignment with current curricular and research needs and library budget cuts.
Many electronic titles are made available through subscription to a package of titles, which renders title-by-title deselection impossible. Packages are routinely analyzed to determine if the overall cost of the subscription is worthwhile, considering both the high and low use titles. Sometimes titles are not available for individual subscription. Packages might also be made available by a consortia subscription, like through VIVA, meaning that W&M Libraries does not have the ability to individually cancel a product that is under a current contract, barring severe financial constraints.
For questions or more information, please contact the appropriate subject liaison or the Collections & Discovery staff.