Principles of selection for electronic resources

THE AVAILABILITY IN ELECTRONIC FORMAT OF scholarly and scientific literatur es and other forms of information relevant to the needs of library users ha s profoundly altered the challenges faced by collection managers. Although the traditional goals of achieving quality, relevance, and balance at a fai r price still animate roost collection-development efforts,judgments about these attributes of resources have become more ambiguous. The traditional s tandards have also been joined by new and highly important criteria which i nclude the definition of the allowable user group and the purposes for whic h use will be permitted, multi-faceted concerns about the functionality of resources, and concerns about the availability of permanent archives. Drawi ng heavily on the ideas of the multi-library consortia, which have grown up partly in response to the advent of electronic resources, librarians have devised new criteria and means of assessing resources against them so that cost-effective acquisitions can be made in die new marketplace.