Library Collection Development Principles
Our Collection Development Principles sets out a general framework on how the University Library acquires, manages, reviews and develops its collection of research, learning and teaching resources. The principles are reflective of the many co-created procedures already in place across the Library and the Archives and that have been developed with our students and academic staff.
Aims of the principles
- To align to the University Vision 2041 and Surrey’s values: Inclusion, Inspiration, Innovation and Integrity
- To maintain consistency and continuity in developing sustainably, and selecting material for the Library
- To provide acquisition and relegation strategies, which set guidelines for the selection and disposal of stock according to subject, user group and format
- To act as a communication tool for academic staff, library staff, students and researchers to ensure learning, teaching and research activities are realised and supported
- To continue in-depth profiling of the collection to identify its strengths and weaknesses and benchmarking against appropriate external collections
Our Collection Development Principles
We align our collections with the University’s Vision 2041. Our collection development will directly support the University’s research and teaching ambition. We balance core collection needs with sustainability, diversity and ethical considerations.
We prioritise value. To make best use of University resources and align to the sustainable growth plan, we make data-driven decisions about the resources we acquire and maintain. We use statistics on usage and cost-per-use during the decision process, but we also recognise that the value of a specific resource depends highly on the context of its use. Working with academic staff in the faculty is important to understand how resources will support their activities, including teaching, research and publication.
We develop our collections to reflect and meet the needs of our diverse communities. We prioritise resources which contribute to diversifying our collections and listen to the feedback from our communities to be more inclusive.
We continue to support, promote and preserve our Archives and Special Collections. The work of Archives and Special Collections supports the University’s values, priorities and commitment to teaching and research excellence. Full details, including a link to the Collections Development Policy, can be found on the Collections page.
We champion Open Research. We support our community with different publishing opportunities and continue to support embedding open research practices at Surrey in both teaching and research. We will also enable academic to retain the rights to reuse and share their research, to disseminate their work as open access via our Surrey Open Research Repository and helping them to meet funders and REF requirements.
We enhance teaching resources and support student experience. We support our students learning experience via the Digital Textbook programme and a clear identification of essential reading on our reading list system. Our ambition is to increase the use of Open Access resources in reading lists and support the user of Open Educational Textbooks in the long term.
We aim to partner with suppliers with sustainable and transparent business models and practices. We aim to develop sustainable and transparent practices and develop partnership with suppliers that aligns with our inclusivity and integrity priorities. We also recognise that critical resources are sometimes available exclusively through suppliers that don’t fully align with our priorities; we aim to influence improvements or support the long-term identification of alternatives.
We aim to positively influence the publishing landscape. We will challenge publishers who engage in practices which lack transparency and are unnecessarily aggressive towards our academic and student community. We will support our staff and students who face challenging behaviours from publishers.
We will continue to innovate our practices and invest in our future. We will continue to improve our infrastructure and services and change our models to reduce reliance on suppliers that don’t align with our principles.