Collection Development Committee Minutes
ARKLink Collection Development Task Force
Friday, March 10
University of Arkansas - Little Rock
Books
The Collection Development Task Force met on March 10, 2000 at UALR. The Task Force discussed consortial purchasing options with several vendors (including Academic Book Center, Ambassador, Blackwells, Book House, Brodart, Coutts, Films for Humanities, Insight Media, Majors, Midwest, Mosby, and Yankee). From our research, we found collective volume discounts can be quite favorable. In fact, most vendors offer increasingly competitive discounts to consortia for specified guaranteed volume levels.
Action
At this stage, we will want to gather relevant collection and vendor information from the member survey and communications with collection development and acquisitions librarians. Once we are able to establish a reasonable volume amount and collect other salient information about vendors, we plan to draft a request for bid to be brought before the ARKLink membership for discussion and action.
Electronic Journals
We also researched several electronic fulltext journal vendors (including OCLC's Electronic Collections Online, Project Muse, JSTOR, HighWire, and Electronic Journal Navigator). Of those services contacted, only Electronic Collections Online and Project Muse seemed like viable options for consortial purchasing. With Electronic Collections Online, pricing is based on journal subscription fees plus the number of titles each member library holds in print.
Action
Amigos is presently working on getting a list of all the printed titles held in ARKLink member libraries so they can get accurate pricing information to us. Project Muse has a fairly clear pricing structure for consortia. We would, however, like to propose alternate pricing to make the terms favorable for all our member libraries.
Research
Finally, we plan to research collection development and purchasing models within other library consortia.
Respectfully submitted by Amanda Moore.