Teaching Students What We Do: A Collection Management Course

Abstract

In recent years, the landscape of collection management has been radically transformed by the explosion of digital content, the importance of collaborative initiatives for content acquisition and shared print management, new licensing and acquisition models, the dramatic shift in facilitating access versus ownership, and new understandings of the role of a library collection in academia. What does this mean for the ways in which we teach the next generation of librarians about the goals and challenges involved in collection management? This article describes the author's experience and strategies in teaching collection management to LIS students in an era of rapid change.