Selection for digital conversion in academic libraries

Electronic technology has begun to change the way scholars conduct their re search. Before this new approach to scholarly inquiry becomes a viable and productive method in institutions of higher learning, the existing resource s that a scholar normally would use in the library must be converted to a d igital format in order to be accessible electronically. How do academic lib raries set about creating a body of knowledge and begin to convert traditio nal print collections to a digital format in order to satisfy what today's researchers want? This article examines previous methods of selection and c ollection building, and applies those supporting principles to today's coll ection-building efforts for digital collections.