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.