JCKL Collection Development / Collection Management and Maintenance

General selection guidelines for all materials are:

1. Lasting value of the content, e.g.,
   • Relation to teaching and research needs
   • Quality of scholarship
   • Uniqueness of content or treatment (including but not limited to acquisition of materials pertaining to the history and development of UCM, the growth and development of the Warrensburg area, and that of the state of Missouri.)
   • Appropriateness of the level of treatment (depth, breadth, etc.)
   • Currency of information and/or frequency of updating
   • Quality of the physical condition of the product 
   • Accessibility of the information (how it is organized and retrieved)
   • Historical value of the item in relation to existing collection materials
2. Strength of present holdings in subject areas or similar subject areas.
3. Reputation or authoritativeness of the author, reliability of the publisher, compiler, producer, vendor, etc.
4. Appropriateness of the readership level of the materials for its intended user (e.g. undergraduate, graduate, faculty).
5. Potential use (size of user community and frequency of use).
6. Currency: Current materials will be given priority over out-of-print materials.
7. Programmatic requirements: Format, scope, and scale of items that are required for accreditation or programmatic licensure of programs currently offered at UCM will be reviewed on a regular basis against the accreditation and/or licensure directives.
8. Electronic: Preference will be given to materials in electronic format.
9. Consortial holdings: Holdings of libraries or consortia with which JCKL has cooperative agreements must be considered when making selection decisions. Consortial or system agreements may override local requests for ownerships.
10. Multiple copies: More than 1 print or electronic copies of any title shall not be purchased without consulting the appropriate library liaison. Purchasing an electronic version is preferred to purchasing multiple print copies. Faculty and/or liaison librarians should be prepared to justify requests for multiple copies.
11. Personal copies: JCKL does not accept faculty personal copies of items regardless of format for use in the context of a university course (e.g. monographs, journals, textbooks, workbooks, tests, software, etc.).
12. Non-circulating titles will be added to the collection in the location where they best serve the needs of the UCM community. 
13. Replacements: Lost, damaged, or missing items are not automatically replaced but instead are evaluated based on the collecting guidelines and usage data for the given area. If damaged or lost materials in obsolete formats are determined to be important to the collection, JCKL will endeavor to replace said materials. If no exact replacement can be obtained, a similar but not exact item may be acquired as replacement.
14. Consumable materials: The library will not purchase materials intended to be consumed in the context of a university course (e.g. workbooks, tests, software, etc.).
15. Textbooks: The library will not purchase or maintain a collection of currently adopted textbooks for coursework.
16. JCKL does not acquire materials to support off-site, non-library collections including department specific resources that are retained outside the library.

JCKL secures access to information through direct licensing from authorized providers and by utilizing connections to open access resources. In addition, Electronic Databases should be considered along with print for acquisition for the General Collection. Their selection may be guided by the following guidelines as well as those stated above:

• Functionality (such as full-text searching)
  • Uniqueness and comprehensiveness of information
  • Reliability, currency and validity of information
  • Frequency of updates
  • Remote access availability
  • Resource sharing
  • Ease of archiving, replacing, or preserving
  • Availability of digital archiving rights
  • Network hardware and/or software compatibility
  • Quality of interface (usability)
  • Quality of retrieval/search engine
  • Training implications
  • Programmatic and/or licensure requirements
  • Potential use (size of user community and frequency of use)
  • Availability and reliability of vendor for customer and technical support, training, etc.
  • Provision of usage statistics based upon accepted standards
  • Reputation and authority of publisher
  • Licensing considerations
  • Treatment of graphics, formulae, and other nonstandard characters
  • Cost of resource and user access

Serials selections and purchases will be guided by the following guidelines as well as those stated above.

1. Serial acquisitions shall be discoverable and indexed in a database currently licensed by JCKL. Any request for serials outside this parameter will be considered on a case by case basis and library liaisons should be prepared to justify acquisition of said serial.
2. Serials required for programmatic requirements will be reviewed on a regular basis in the following areas: format, scope, and scale. Current serial subscriptions will be compared against the programs currently offered at UCM and the corresponding accreditation and/or licensure directive(s).
3. Current serial subscriptions are reviewed annually by the University Librarian, Assistant University Librarian, Assessment and Acquisitions Librarian, and library liaisons for continued appropriateness to the University’s and the Library’s mission, to keep expenditures within the departmental allocations, and to meet consortial or system agreements.

JCKL is committed to the principles of open access, as outlined in the IFLA Statement on Open Access to Scholarly Literature and Research Documentation (https://www.ifla.org/publications/ifla-statement-on-open-access-to-scholarly-literature-and-research-documentation). Resources provided by JCKL include open access and born-digital products to support the educational and research-related goals of the university. JCKL strives to meet the research needs of all users, including community users, by actively seeking out and supporting barrier-free access to quality information.

In the current information landscape many, if not most, library resources are born-digital. JCKL establishes access to authoritative born-digital resources via a wide variety of acquisition methods, including purchase, harvest and subsequent hosting of online materials, and referral to open access content that is not held by JCKL.

For the purposes of this policy open access and born-digital materials include:

• Resources clearly designated as open access, provided via the Internet with unrestricted access to peer-reviewed scholarly research;
• Resources clearly designated as open content, provided via the Internet  with unrestricted access to information for which the creators have formally asserted a statement that the information is licensed under open content standards, such as a variety of Creative Commons licenses; and
• Resources that are freely available via the Internet, that meet standards of quality and value as described in the Selection Guidelines portion of the general collection policy as stated above, and that are otherwise known or assumed to be under copyright.

In addition to the Selection Guidelines outlined above, the following evaluative criteria should be used in selecting open access and born-digital materials:

Quality: the information in the resource logically pertains to the resource’s apparent subject; the information is reliably accurate, demonstrably factual, and reasonably comprehensive or complete; indicators of quality can include peer reviews or librarian reviews of site and/or site content, the presence of an authoritative author or publisher, a professional look and feel, or evidence of continuing support of the resource such as archives; contact information is available for the author and publishing authority

Authoritativeness: the credentials of the author and publisher are clearly identifiable, the legitimacy of the publishing domain of the source is apparent (e.g. .edu, .gov, .org or .net are preferred to other types of domains), and the publishing agency is recognized as reputably and likely to persist;

Objectivity: the information is provided in a circumspect manner that is open to verification and validation, with minimal advertising or other nuisances that distract the user from the primary information in the resource;

Currency: the publication date of the information is recent (within the parameters of the subject), clearly stated, and/or updated regularly as stated on the resource; and

Functionality: any citations or links are correct and functional; no (or minimal) additional software beyond a standard web browser is needed to view the resource; the resource does not require fees for access, and there is a preference that registration for access not be required; and if at all possible the resource offers options for viewing text only, for by-passing frames, or for changing the display for better viewing.

New materials, subscriptions and content decisions are based in part on requests from the UCM community. New requests for consideration can be made by completing our Purchase Request Form (https://ucmo.libwizard.com/f/item-request). New and updated content is announced on the libraries’ webpage.

Whom should I contact at JCKL for more information?

For more information or any questions please contact University Librarian and Collection Management Coordinator, Dr. Janette Klein directly at jklein@ucmo.edu.