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Abstract
This paper presents results of a study of corporate library selection activity performed to support four global corporations. The firms examined are involved in providing communication, knowledge in its different forms, and computing. Using these results, this paper synthesizes literature on selection and collection development to present an approach to developing an eventual theory of collection development. Using this approach, such a theory would predict the performance of selection activity; the operation of its attributes, such as its cost, centralization, and formalization; and the operation of other collection development activities. Concurrently, it would explain these predictions using dynamics such as the need to include specified ideas within selected content, the need to cope with selector's abilities to choose vast amounts of content, the need to contain selection cost, and the need to gather material together so as to support browsing and its resulting impromptu development of ideas.
Acknowledgements
First, I am deeply appreciative for the excellent direction and support I received in developing these ideas, particularly from Dr. Charles Osburn, Dr. Marion Paris, and Dr. Annabel Stephens, all of the University of Alabama. Second, I would like to thank the honor society for Library and Information Science, Beta Phi Mu. The society's award to me of a Eugene Garfield Dissertation helped greatly with dissertation expenses, especially travel for data collection.
Also, I would like to express my gratitude to the companies that participated in this study. The data collection for this study took many months, and the managers were open to working with me and very generous with their time. The contact persons, when different from the company managers, were also extremely helpful. Finally, I would especially like to thank my interviewees, who provided the data that made this study worth doing. Their responses were consistently rich and thoughtful. All of these people's tremendous generosity enabled a young researcher an extraordinary opportunity: to study important corporations in depth.