Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Conventional Wisdom Or Faulty Logic? The Recent Literature On Monograph Use And E-Book Acquisition, Amy Fry

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The idea that academic libraries acquire a great many books that are never used, and that this is because traditional collection development – i.e., professional librarians purchasing books based on subject expertise and local knowledge of student and faculty needs and interests – is ineffective, has been repeated frequently during the last decade. This claim has been used as justification to change collection practices and to bolster ideas about new organizational models for libraries and their work. A closer look at the literature, however, reveals that the data being cited to support this claim has been communicated, for the most …