The core of the library is the collection. Library, being an information bank, its pivotal role is enshrined in the basic mandate of stocking information materials to meet the needs of users. The quality of the collection remains the litmus test of service delivery effectiveness in the academic world. It is the functional domain of collection development to peg collection quality high. Well-conceived collection development encompasses a range of activities such as selection, acquisition, user studies, stock evaluation, weeding and interlibrary cooperation. None of these activities is inconsequential in the bid to achieve high quality collection as they all work in synergy. The collection development which composed of the information resources, constitutes the basic instrument of service delivery in the library. Thus, librarians involved in collection development roles must now reach as far as possible into the larger world of prints and web scholarly content to add, organize, promote and make quality material discoverable and accessible. Librarians need to expose the research materials housed in repositories and on the open web, even as these materials are often hidden from scholars due to lack of indexing, inadequate crawling by major search engines, existence of poor quality metadata, or a lack of librarian effort at marketing of material that might maximize usage and accessibility. Therefore, Collection development librarians and subject specialists are best poised to know which public domain materials might best be needed and made more accessible to institutional scholars and to local communities.
Citation: Olubiyo P.O. (2023) Collection Development in Academic Libraries: Challenges and Way Forward, International Journal of Library and Information Science Studies, Vol.9, No.3, pp.1-9,
Keywords: Academic Libraries, collection development
