I'll echo Gary's astute observations and comments but add a few of my that may also counter his.
Approval plans do not automatically select content. They serve the purpose of weeding OUT content to be considered, the library is presented only with titles that match predefined parameters. There is no single approach to approval plans. Some ship materials automatically, for example YBPs Childrens Literature Awards program (select the winners of specific awards). Others ship books on approval. These shipments are then reviewed by selectors and accepted or returned. Another approach uses "slips", automatically generated from a profile, then reviewed by selectors and ordered or not. Increasingly slips plans are being conducted with online lists. Approval plans worked well when collections budgets were robust, and especially well for very large (university) libraries serving large numbers of areas of study, and for whom "Just in Case" was the operating mode of collection development. But at the same time these plans did not work.... Several studies have shown that between 40% and 60% of the monographs added to a collection are never checked out. In short, a huge expenditure from the collections budget, plus cataloging and processing plus storage costs, wasted on materials that apparently are not being used. Enter the development of Patron Driven collection development. In this scenario records are entered into the library catalog. These records are still based on an approval profile. Then if the users access an ebook X times, or requests a print book, the library purchases the item. Also not a perfect system.... but with PDA 100% of the items entering the collection are used. We attempted a PDA approach to Films on Demand before they had a subscription service. It was TOO successful. For a number of reasons including lack of clarity on what constituted a use, and a hair trigger for purchasing... we outstripped the funding provided for the collection. The upside, however, was that our driving FMG to offer this approach ultimately resulted in their modifying their business model to provide a subscription service. I think there is still room for experimentation in PDA for media, and for individual, larger distributors to offer some form of approval plan. But no approval plan can provide a one stop shopping experience for media collection development. I understand that the Coutts approval plan includes some video, mostly mainstream Hollywood stuff. By the way....as a comparison of monograph use in university libraries... Last year I weeded the Fletcher Library VHS collection. I reviewed all VHS titles that were added to the collection before 2005, so had been in the collection for at least 5 years. Of those videos, only 3% had NO circulation at all. My approach was not scientific... but I think it is interested in comparison to the monograph statistics. -deg deg farrelly ASU Libraries Arizona State University P.O. Box 871006 Tempe, Arizona 85287-1006 480.965.1403 <Here's a profoundly curmudegonly take on video approval plans for academic <libraries. VIDEOLIB is intended to encourage the broad and lively discussion of issues relating to the selection, evaluation, acquisition,bibliographic control, preservation, and use of current and evolving video formats in libraries and related institutions. It is hoped that the list will serve as an effective working tool for video librarians, as well as a channel of communication between libraries,educational institutions, and video producers and distributors.
