STRATEGIC DIRECTION: Managing Collections and Access

Objectives:

• Employ use statistics and user assessment instruments to create collections and access that support curricular and research needs.
• Collect, catalog, and make available a broad range of formats.
• Select local purchases (hard copy and electronic) to address needs of our local end users and also to honor commitment to statewide cooperative collection building by concentrating on areas of current collection strength and ongoing curricular relevance.
• Maintain a balance between budgetary allocations for electronic access to content and the acquisition, cataloging, and preservation of tangible materials within our general collection and our special collections.
• Stand by BGSU's financial commitments to OhioLINK.
• Create, enhance, and maintain high quality bibliographic records for internal and external users.
• Develop, analyze and implement strategies to address areas of uncataloged materials not available for research and retrieval via the online system.
• Manage, evaluate and articulate physical access and preservation needs for all collections.
• Evaluate and articulate the role of the Northwest Ohio Regional Book Depository in support of teaching, learning, and research.
• Educate the BGSU community about the challenges higher education is facing in the area of scholarly communication and its impact on libraries.
• Enhance access to materials, both print and electronic, by maintaining the integrity of the patron database.
  

University Challenges:

Recognize that managing collections and access to informational resources world-wide is crucial to building a competitive research infrastructure that effectively supports faculty and undergraduate research. The ability to do this is highly sensitive to combined pressures of inflation, budget cuts on campus and within the state, and escalating costs of material from publishers and online vendors.

• Exempt the UL budget from any future University budget cuts or give-backs.
• Commit to a materials acquisitions budget that at a minimum keeps pace with inflation.
• Work with the UL to identify a donor base and to build endowments for both general and specialized collections.
• Adopt as a long-term goal joining with academic libraries and universities nationwide in studying, publicizing, and addressing problems associated with the high cost of academic and scholarly publishing.

Financially support the UL obligation to preserve access to materials and content not only for current users but also for future teachers, learners, and researchers.

• Provide the UL with sufficient funds to acquire, catalog, house, and preserve paper-based material for which digitization will never be commercially viable.
• Provide UL with resources for archiving digitized content--resources that include but are not limited to the following: equipment upgrades, software upgrades, technical support, and conversion funds for digital content that is not cost-effective to maintain in its original format.