Introduction:

A policy delineates a course of action, in this case the translation of Cornell University's academic programs into their supporting library collections. The authors of this compilation are the thirty bibliographers, curators, and selectors-- selection officers in shorthand-- who exercize collection development functions in the library. These area and subject specialists have developed a keen understanding of publishing patterns and trends in research and teaching at Cornell. Weighing these factors against their materials budgets makes for interesting work.

This compilation of policies intends to inform on two levels. First, it communicates between selection officers and those who use the materials they select. While some readers of the documents may puzzle over their abstruse level and language notations, most will gain an understanding of the appropriation of library resources to subjects and areas at the University. The policies also document communication within the library. A part of their compilation resulted from understandings reached between librarians on boundary and overlap, both problematic given the nature of interdisciplinary research and the institutional imperatives of Cornell.

Format:
Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) interpreted by browsers on the World Wide Web seems tailor-made for publishing this compilation. An HTML document is maleable; revisions are easily entered and displayed. HTML is also extremely portable. An "original," residing on a server can be read, printed, or copied to digital storage, from any machine connected to the Internet. And HTML enables an editor to establish intertextual links, the underlined segments you see, for index references and to enable readers to establish different contexts for the statements.

The form and substance of the individual policies reflects the preferences of the selection officers who wrote them. Common to all is a description of the primary user community, an assessment of the historical collection strength and current collecting levels (explanations of which are held in a glossary, which is part of this document), a description of the subjects covered, geographical parameters, and exclusions.

Areas for expansion:
Disposition is a logical extension of the collection data compiled in this document. With recognition of the effects deterioration of materials so carefully acquired and processed, preservation has become an increasing concern for selection officers, and the policies seem logical locations for communicating decisions on which materials bear the highest priorities for preservation. The same logic applies to selection for storage of materials off the central campus.

Just as we were going to press (or pixel, as it were) with this document, Dan C. Hazen stole some of our thunder by pointing to the theoretical advantages of hyper text in compiling collection policy statements. [1] We fall heir to his challenge to use the medium not only for index, but for context, to allow readers to search themes across statements, for instance, or to broaden or narrow terms used by the authors.

[1]Hazen's article appears as "Collection Development Policies in the Information Age," College and Research Libraries, January 1995, pp.29-31.