PurposeLibrary resources evolve daily with ongoing expansion of electronic offerings by publishers and vendors. Collection development policies have long been employed to guide decision making and inform stakeholders, but how are these policies serving libraries and their users as our collections continue to move online? This paper aims to discuss the role of collection development polices, past and present, and the challenge of collections moving to an electronic format.Design/methodology/approachThe authors performed a content analysis to discover how academic libraries are addressing this change in collection development.FindingsThe paper finds that virtually all libraries do an excellent job of addressing the traditional elements of collection development. About half of the libraries mentioned electronic licensing issues in the policy, but most of those were general statements.Originality/valueAlthough the library profession is well aware of the changes that electronic resources bring to libraries, there is not a lot of research on how collection development policies should guide electronic resource management. As shown in this research, it is often completely left out of the collection development policy process.

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An important goal of the project was to share the analysis with library liaisons in an effort to assist them with collection development responsibilities. The analysis raises questions about the relationship between discovery, access, and collection development.