Schoenecker Law Library Collection Development Policy
Collection Development Policy University of St. Thomas Schoenecker Law Library May 2005
Staffing and Selection Process
Criteria for Acquiring and Licensing Resources
Cataloging of Free Web Resources
School of Law Centers , Institutes and Departments
Cooperative Collection Development
Introduction
The University of St. Thomas (UST) Law Library exists to support the teaching, research and service mission of the School of Law . The Law Library strives for excellence in service and in the quality of its collections. One of its primary goals is to provide a broad array of resources in all media, in order to meet the needs of the faculty, staff and students.
Because the Law Library is still new and rapidly growing, this collection development policy will be revisited regularly during the coming years. It is a living document that reflects current practice as well as long-term philosophy.
Collection Principles
Within the framework of a new law school, the Law Library's highest priority is to support the developing curriculum. During the first academic year the focus of collection development was on the core areas of civil procedure, constitutional law, contracts, criminal law, property and torts. Additionally, the lawyering skills program dictated the purchase of primary and secondary sources to support the building of basic legal research skills.
As the upper-level curriculum develops and expands, the Law Library continues to provide resources to support required and elective courses. The Law Library supports faculty and student research interests, which continue to grow as the curriculum matures. Similarly, the Law Library continues to focus on building information resources to support the law school's faith-based mission and emphasis on public service.
Because of the continuing development of new formats for the delivery of legal information, the Law Library places a strong emphasis on the balancing of traditional print and microform resources with electronic media. Access and ownership have equal consideration in the building of information resources, with the underlying principle of choosing the most effective format for the type of information and research use.
Staffing and Selection Process
The Associate Director for Information Resources has primary responsibility for development of the Law Library's collection, in consultation with the Director, the other librarians, faculty, and staff. Initially this effort concentrated on building a core collection, supporting the first-year curriculum, and providing materials identified by faculty to support their teaching and research. A collection development committee composed of the librarians meets monthly to consider policies and make decisions on collection maintenance and retention. Several librarians also have specific selection responsibilities.
Librarian selectors are responsible for assigned subject areas and for contributing to policy discussions and decisions. Their specific collection development responsibilities include monitoring the literature in their assigned subjects, selecting materials to be acquired, selecting free electronic resources for cataloging, recommending electronic resources for licensing, preparing research guides in their subject areas, weeding the collection as necessary, and following developments in the legal publishing industry.
The Associate Director works collaboratively with the other librarians and maintains oversight of the development of the print and electronic resources, allocates funds, monitors the budget, and maintains regular communication with faculty.
Content
The Law Library acquires primary materials for U.S. federal and state jurisdictions in print for ease of use. Hard copy may be duplicated by various electronic resources, including Lexis and Westlaw.
The library also acquires some secondary materials and finding aids in print, both for usability and for the purpose of teaching legal research skills, and some of these materials are duplicated by electronic versions. Other secondary materials, such as traditional print looseleaf services, are generally licensed in their electronic form but may also be duplicated in print for ease of use when the electronic versions do not support the research needs of our users.
As a foundation for its treatise collection, the library acquired the microfiche sets of 19 th and 20 th Century Legal Treatises and the law portion of the Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Only major works from the 19 th and early 20 th century are duplicated in print, but the library aggressively collects treatises from the last half of the 20 th century. The library has laid the foundation for a strong print treatise collection by acquiring resources on all traditional legal topics, with an emphasis on Anglo-American and international law.
The library also acquires materials to support the law school's broad interdisciplinary interests, including treatises on religion, philosophy, ethics, Catholic studies, human rights, social justice, public policy, and public service.
The library provides online access to Minnesota continuing legal education materials from 2000 forward through a service of Minnesota CLE. The library does not routinely collect national or state continuing legal education (CLE) materials in print, but titles will be purchased or accepted as gifts for the collection if they contain substantial original material. The library collects other practice materials comprehensively for Minnesota and selectively for a group of eleven states that were chosen in consultation with the lawyering skills faculty. For these eleven states the library maintains a collection of digests, encyclopedias, Shepard's citators, practice sets, and other practice materials. The states outside of Minnesota are California , Florida , Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, and Wisconsin. The library evaluates this list on a regular basis.
To support the curriculum, the library acquires and puts on Reserve the casebooks and textbooks for all required classes. For elective courses the library acquires and puts on Reserve materials appropriate to the permanent collection, as determined by this policy. Generally the library does not acquire documentary supplements or volumes that contain selected statutes on a particular topic, although exceptions are made for particularly important compilations.
The library acquires bound periodicals in print from 1980 forward and earlier volumes in microform. If microform is not available, the entire back run is acquired in print.
The library is not a depository for U.S. federal or Minnesota documents, but it actively collects government documents in print and microform as needed. The library also provides electronic access to these resources through a variety of databases and web sites.
The collection includes some materials for non-lawyers.
The library supports a collection of casual reading materials for students (housed in the area adjacent to the circulation desk in the library) and a collection of news and current awareness publications for faculty (housed in the faculty lounge).
Criteria for Acquiring and Licensing Resources
Selectors are expected to be completely familiar with the Law Library's information resources and to have a full understanding of the principles that shape the collection. They also have knowledge of the law school's curriculum and an understanding of the research needs of both faculty and students.
Selectors bring this background knowledge to the collection development process. When evaluating new titles for the collection, selectors also apply standard criteria:
- user need or interest
- subject content and scope
- reputation of the publisher and author(s)
- cost
- existing holdings
- format and ease of use
- language (non-English materials acquired only as necessary)
- historical value
Format
As noted above, access and ownership have equal consideration in the building of information resources. The library strives for a balance of print, microform and electronic resources, with the choice of format made based on the type of information contained in the publication and the way in which it will be used most effectively.
The library also collects in other media, such as video, as needed to support the doctrinal and skills-based curriculum. The library prefers DVD to VHS for visual materials and CD to audiotape for audio materials.
Cataloging of Free Web Resources
Librarians are responsible for selection of free websites in their subject areas for inclusion in CLICnet. Selection of Internet resources is based on the same general criteria that are applied to all other formats. In addition, selectors should consider these criteria:
- relationship that the resource might have to other resources in the library's collection, i.e. duplicates, replaces or complements print or microform resources
- authenticity and credibility of the source
- currency and updating frequency
- stability and long-term reliability
- easy accessibility, i.e. registration and passwords not required
- interface design and functionality
Some examples of free web resources that might be selected for cataloging include association and organization websites, primary legal materials maintained by courts or other government agencies, web-based journals, reference tools, research guides, subject gateways, and meta-sites.
Gifts and Exchanges
The Law Library accepts gifts of materials appropriate to the collection provided that no restrictions are placed on the gift. The library reserves the right to add, discard, sell or exchange materials received as gifts. The Associate Director for Information Resources responds to all gift inquiries. The Associate Director or the designated selector applies standard selection criteria when deciding whether or not to add materials received as gifts to the collection.
The library does not enter into exchange agreements unless material cannot be acquired any other way.
Faculty Publications
The library acquires two copies of all faculty-authored treatises or chapters in treatises. Reprints of law review articles are not added to the collection but may be obtained for purposes of the faculty publications display case at the entrance to the library.
School of Law Centers , Institutes and Departments
The Associate Director for Information Resources works actively with other law school staff to assist them in acquiring materials to support the work of their departments. This includes the Interprofessional Center for Counseling and Legal Services, the Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law and Public Policy, the Office of Career and Professional Development, and the Mentor Externship Program.
Retention and Deselection
The library maintains one copy of older editions of hornbooks, nutshells, and selected treatises. Multiple copies of older editions are withdrawn.
The library withdraws superseded materials and some older editions from the collection. When a single volume of a multi-volume set is replaced, the library does not retain the replaced volume.
As a general practice, selectors will weed the collection regularly, using the standard criteria.
Binding and Preservation
The library uses two commercial binderies, both of which adhere to the standards of the Library Binding Institute. One bindery handles all periodical binding, while the other bindery handles binding of monographs issued in paperback format. The library does minor book repair in-house.
All paperback books that are permanent additions to the collection are bound. In routine cases, books are bound prior to addition to the collection. When paperbound materials are needed for Reserve, they are not bound until they are no longer in high demand, typically during the summer months when classes are not held.
Cooperative Collection Development
The Law Library has no formal cooperative collection development agreements, but the library cooperates informally with other law libraries in the metropolitan area and with the libraries of the University of St. Thomas .
The Associate Director for Information Resources is a member of the university-wide Collection Management Committee, the Social Sciences Librarians Round Table, and the Technical Advisory Group for electronic resources. These groups discuss, among other things, new database purchases, periodical cancellations, weeding, and location of subject-specific collections.
The Law Library works with the University Archives to maintain the records of the School of Law .
The Law Library works cooperatively with the UST Libraries to provide law and law-related resources to the university community. The Law Library's print and microform resources are available to students, faculty and staff of St. Thomas . The Law Library's licensed electronic resources are made available to the campus when pricing structures and license agreements permit. The print and electronic resources of the other campus libraries are made available to the law school community.
Faculty, students and staff of the School of Law have ready access to the collections of the other UST libraries and the member libraries of CLIC (Cooperating Libraries in Consortium). CLIC's web-based online catalog, CLICNET, is available on all law school computers and remotely via the web. Law Library users have borrowing privileges at the other CLIC libraries and may request materials owned by those libraries directly through the online catalog. The CLIC consortium includes the Hamline Law Library.
CLIC makes some consortial purchases of electronic resources and electronic books, including NetLibrary titles and some general reference databases.
The MINITEX Library Information Network is the regional network for OCLC services, and the Law Library uses OCLC's cataloging and interlibrary loan subsystems. MINITEX also acts as a broker for a variety of online databases, some of which are made available statewide.
