I. Purpose of Collection Development Policy

The main purpose of the Collection Development Policy is to establish operating guidelines for the planned development of a quality collection of materials to meet the educational needs of students and faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater as guided by the missions of the University Cluster, the University and the Library.

The Library is a vital instruction and information resource for the University. Primary users are the undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff. Its collection should serve instructional, curricular and research needs of its primary users. At the same time, the exploding production of books, periodicals, audiovisual media and computer software, rising costs and a limited budget demand a prudent selection policy which acknowledges the need to rely on cooperative resource sharing.

The policy intends to provide general guidelines for allocating funds fairly, establishing collection levels for each subject area, and formulating objective selection criteria. The goals are to ensure consistency among those who have responsibility for developing the collection and to provide a tool for evaluating and improving collections for all relevant subject disciplines.

The policy statement is intended to be flexible enough to respond to long- and short-range objectives of the institution, and changes in the library operation and the publishing industry. Periodic review of this policy will ensure that it reflects any important changes to academic programs.

The library collection includes all media forms, i.e., books, periodicals, pamphlets, microforms, audio-visual materials, CD-ROMs, computer software, networked resources, etc. The Library upholds and promotes the American Library Association's "Bill of Rights" (Appendix F), "Freedom to Read Statement (Appendix G), and "Intellectual Freedom Statement" (Appendix H).