Ely Library staff create collection guidelines in order to better ensure that library collections remain relevant to the University community and fit within our Collection Development Policy parameters. These guidelines may be updated as the needs and priorities of the University shift.

Ely Library maintains and upholds the principles outlined in the ALA Bill of Rights as well as the Ely Library Collection Development Policy.

There has been a proliferation of self-published and independently published materials since 2010. The growth of this sector and the ease of discovery of these items on platforms such as Amazon.com has necessitated the development of acquisition guidelines that include minimum acceptable publishing standards for inclusion in the collection.

Note: These guidelines apply to those materials purchased for our main circulating and reference collections, and do not apply to the items purchased or donated to the Ely Library Zine Collection. Zines by their nature will not adhere to the criteria outlined below.

Guidelines

At a minimum, materials purchased for inclusion in the library's collection:

• Should contain substantial original content and not be comprised of copied and pasted or minimally edited content from freely available news and government websites, blogs, or wiki entries.
• Should bear evidence of having been copyedited and formatted for professional publication.
• If described as scholarly work, should follow the conventions of the appropriate field, including formatted citations and peer review as indicated.
• Materials that bulk up minimal content through extensive rephrasing and repetition are indicative of low quality and lack of professional editing.
• Any self-published or independently published item, and especially those not found in the OCLC catalog or held by fewer than 5 OCLC libraries, may be subject to additional review to ensure it meets the basic publishing standards outlined above. When items do not meet publishing standards, alternative titles on the same subject may be suggested.

Collection Development Guidance:

Curation of title lists via browsing Amazon should be undertaken with caution. It is increasingly difficult to differentiate high-quality materials from low-quality titles created primarily to generate sales on the platform. A check of the publisher and even a glance at reviews (both those included in an item description and those written by customers) will often indicate whether there is an issue with the publishing quality of the title.

Demand Driven Acquisitions (DDA)

The idea behind demand-driven acquisition is to purchase materials specifically requested by faculty and students at the point of need, getting materials into patron hands as fast as or faster than traditional interlibrary loan methods. Most DDA programs set out broad parameters for purchase; if an item falls outside these parameters, it will be requested via interlibrary loan. If the item is unavailable via interlibrary loan, the patron should be notified and asked whether they are interested in alternative titles on the same topic.

The criteria for demand driven acquisition at Ely Library include:

• Published within the past 10 years
• Under $40
• Requested by WSU patron (library staff excluded)
• Format/genre must fall broadly within the scope of what the library collects (no cookbooks, video games, etc.)
• Must adhere to the Collection Integrity Guidelines
• Readily available through Amazon or Ingram
• In addition, textbooks are generally not ordered through DDA, though some exceptions may be made for faculty-requested titles that may be used in the classroom.

Self-published works will not be purchased via DDA; requests for purchase of self-published works must be submitted to the subject librarian for review.

Requests come to the library via the regular ILL process and are routed to acquisitions or to fulfillment via ILL depending on the outcome of a review of the criteria above.

Guidelines for Textbook Purchasing

The provisions of these guidelines supplement the Ely Library Collection Development Policy and are used in conjunction with the provisions in that policy.*

What is a textbook?

These guidelines use a narrow definition of the word textbook, as defined by Joan M. Reits in the Online Dictionary for Library and Information Science (ODLIS). A textbook is:

An edition of a book specifically intended for the use of students who are enrolled in a course of study or preparing for an examination on a subject or in an academic discipline, as distinct from the trade edition of the same title, sometimes published in conjunction with a workbook, lab manual, and/or teacher's manual. Also refers to the standard work used for a specific course of study, whether published in special edition or not. 

Regular academic monographs, works of literature, musical scores, handbooks and instruction manuals that are not specifically created for classroom use are not considered textbooks under these guidelines.

Textbook Purchasing

Like most other academic libraries, Ely Library does not purchase textbooks for the main collection. In extremely limited circumstances, textbooks may be purchased if they fill a collection gap or provide information that is not available in other sources.

Rationale

There are several reasons why the library does not typically acquire textbooks for the general collection:

• Textbooks are considered essential, daily supplies for students, not supplemental materials. The library cannot provide textbooks in sufficient quantity to serve all students who need these materials.
• Textbooks are both costly and regularly updated. Ely Library does not have the funding to continually update these resources, nor does the library have space to accommodate a continually growing collection of textbooks.
• Textbooks may be of varying quality and content may not be current.
• Increasingly, print textbooks are supplemented by or replaced with online materials. The library cannot provide equitable access to these materials, which are sold using an individual-user licensing model.

Textbooks purchased for course reserves, or for the circulating collection, should be considered print-only. No digital access information will be provided unless it is a freely available url. Unfortunately most textbooks are intended for individual rather than shared use, and the way publishers set up access to digital content does not match our model of unmediated multi-user access. 

Alternatives to Purchasing Textbooks

Course Reserves: Faculty and/or departments may choose to place a personal copy of a textbook on reserve, or to donate a copy to be placed on reserve. Personal copies will be returned to the faculty member once the semester is finished. Donated items will become property of the University and subject to the retention, cataloging, and deselection procedures outlined in the Ely Library Collection Development Policy.

Library Efforts to Reduce Textbook Costs

The Open Educational Resources (OER) grant initiative is one way that Westfield State University is working to mitigate the effects of rising textbook costs. This combined effort of Ely Library, The Office of Grants and Sponsored Programs, and The Westfield State Foundation provides funding for faculty so that they may locate and adapt OERs for use in their classes. In its first two years, this program saved students an estimated $163,000 in textbook costs. Information regarding the application process is disseminated via campus e-mail before each round of funding. OERs are generally available for free or minimal cost, and there are several online repositories dedicated to these materials.

*These guidelines also were informed by those of the University of Virginia, Duke University, University of Maryland, and Muhlenburg College.