Introduction

Colorado State University is a four-year, land-grant, Hispanic-serving, Carnegie large doctoral university with very high research activity. Colorado State University Libraries serves the University’s students, faculty, staff, and community guests as a dynamic research library focused on undergraduate and graduate education. The collection development and management process outlined in this document supports the university through selection, acquisition, replacement, and deselection of library materials. The objective of this policy is to curate a vital and relevant collection that serves Colorado State University in its mission, vision, and strategic goals. 

The Libraries develops physical and electronic material collections that support the research and teaching of the University and the strategic goals of the Libraries. These collections are rooted in the objective to represent the full spectrum of human endeavor, culture, and experience.  

Strategic Vision

The Libraries approaches collection development and management with a strategic and forward-looking perspective. This includes developing a collection that is current, relevant, and representative of marginalized communities. Collection sustainability is of vital importance not only monetarily but in the open dissemination of information. The Libraries will strive to meet the needs of Colorado State University’s community while moving into new modes of scholarly publishing and academic support. 

Values

Collections decisions at the Libraries are guided by the following values:  

Access 

The Libraries is committed to expanding access to knowledge and research. By providing resources in various formats and modes we acknowledge individual patron needs. We are committed to working with vendors to ensure all electronic content complies with university policy, federal law, and the W3C guidelines.  

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Social Justice 

The Libraries supports the ideals of diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice as laid out in the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Diversity Standards: Cultural Competency for Academic Libraries in its collections.  

Intellectual Freedom 

The Libraries adheres to the tenets of intellectual freedom as detailed in the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights and Freedom to Read Statement. This guides our collection development in ensuring that the “interests, information, and enlightenment of all people” are served by our collection. 

Openness 

The Libraries believes knowledge should be freely shared and that more equitable research and learning environments are created through an open scholarly ecosystem. As a member of SPARC we strive work toward this common mission, advocating for open access publishing and the use of open educational resources.  

Privacy 

The Libraries is committed to protecting our patrons’ privacy. We strive to fulfill our responsibilities to patron privacy in the work we do with patron data and the agreements we enter into with vendors and other institutions as outlined in the American Library Association’s Library Privacy Guidelines for Vendors.  

Assessment

The Libraries systematically evaluates the collection to ensure it supports the research, teaching, and learning mission of the University, and that it represents a wide range of perspectives and ideas with particular attention to those from marginalized and under-represented groups and voices. 

Deselection 

In order to maintain a relevant and useful collection, the Libraries deselects physical and electronic titles on a regular basis from the collection based on assessment reports, subject area specific needs, and overall collection analysis.

Learn more about library resource cancellations.

Donations

The Libraries is not currently accepting unsolicited donations of material for the general collection due to space constraints and processing costs.  

Partnerships

The Libraries is a member of several library consortia which provide cooperative licensing and/or collection retention agreements including the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (The Alliance), Colorado Library Consortium (CLiC), Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA), HathiTrust, and WEST: Western Regional Storage Trust.  

The Libraries leverages these partnerships to ensure better resource pricing, transformative scholarly agreements, more robust resource access, and physical material retention cost-savings, as well as cooperative collection development. For academic libraries, consortia play a critical role in ensuring access and sustainability by providing contract negotiation economies of scale. The Libraries is continually seeking out new partnerships both externally and internally to ensure the best results for CSU faculty, staff, and students.  

For questions about the Libraries’ Collection Strategies contact:

Heidi Splittgerber
Interim Head of Collection Strategies
Heidi.Splittgerber@ColoState.edu