 Policy adopted August 1996
Collection Priorities
Priorities for collection development are as follows:
- to serve the curricular needs of undergraduate students
- to support faculty teaching needs
- to support graduate research in selected areas, based upon graduate programs
- to support faculty research
- to support leisure reading and community needs beyond the university
NOTE:
Highly specialized materials are purchased very selectively. Electronic access, OhioLINK borrowing, document delivery, or
traditional interlibrary loan should be relied upon to provide more specialized information needed by researchers.
Core Selection Criteria
These are essential factors that should be considered for any addition to the collection. Additional criteria applicable to
special formats are listed in the sections dealing with those formats.
- Support of one or more collection development priorities, regardless of format.
- Value -- content, format, physical condition, and cost effectiveness (anticipated use versus cost).
- Collection level -- appropriateness of the subject content and intellectual level of material to the stated subject collection
development level.
- Authority -- originates from a recognized authority on the subject.
- Currency of information.
- Access -- availability from an external source through interlibrary loan, OhioLINK, document delivery, or other electronic
access.
- Indexing -- for serials, electronic or print indexing available at Bowling Green State University.
Collection Levels
In each subject area represented in the University curriculum, collection management selects materials in appropriate formats
to the depth needed to support the degree programs in place. The levels of collecting for each type of degree program follow;
they are adapted from the WLN Conspectus. It should be understood that these levels represent an ideal that will be pursued to the extent that funds permit.
Undergraduate:
This level provides resources adequate for imparting and maintaining knowledge about the basic or primary topics of a subject
area. It includes a broad range of basic works in appropriate formats, classic retrospective materials, key journals on primary
topics, selected journals and seminal works on secondary topics, access to appropriate machine-readable data files, and the
reference tools and fundamental bibliographical apparatus pertaining to the subject. It supports to a lesser extent subjects
that are taught but in which no degree is offered.
Master's:
This level provides resources adequate for imparting and maintaining knowledge about primary and secondary topics of a subject
area. It includes and/or provides access to a significant number of seminal works and journals on the primary and secondary
topics in the field; a significant number of retrospective materials; a substantial collection of works by secondary figures;
works that provide more in-depth discussions of research, techniques, and evaluation.
Doctoral:
This level includes and/or provides access to the major published source materials required for dissertation and independent
research, reporting new findings, scientific experimental results, and other information useful to researchers. It also includes
and/or provides access to important reference works, to a wide selection of specialized monographs, to an extensive collection
of journals, and to major indexing and abstracting services in the field. Crucial foreign language materials are included.
Older material is retained if pertinent for historical research.
Languages Collected
The University Libraries collect materials primarily in the English language for the general collection. Translations of foreign
language materials are normally preferred to the originals. There are three prominent exceptions:
- Literature, literary criticism, and materials relating to foreign cultures appropriate to language department curricula
- Selected major foreign newspapers and periodicals
- When information is required in a particular foreign language or is not available in English
Materials Not Collected
The following types of material are not collected for the general collection. This statement does not preclude these types
of material being collected by the appropriate special collection(s).
- Juvenile books
- Games or other realia
- Three dimensional objects
- Art works
- Posters
- Pamphlets
- Musical scores
- Musical recordings
- Maps
- Manuscripts
- Archival materials
- Serial genre fiction
- Photographs
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