Criteria for selecting electronic resources for school libraries incorporates the traditional criteria for selecting tangible resources with additional elements needed to be considered.  The nature of a library’s collection has dramatically changed to include both tangible and intangible resources and our collection criteria need to reflect this change.  Gorman (2000) redefined collection to include locally owned tangible material, tangible material owned in other linked libraries, intangible owned resources (eBooks) and remote intangible resources not owned but given access to by the library (Fieldhouse, M & Marshall, A., 2013, p 15).  Criteria such as audience, accuracy, curriculum and student outcomes consideration, as outlined by the Queensland Government Department of Education (2018) are common among many collection management policies.  These criteria remain important no matter what format the resource is delivered in if we are to maintain a collection that is both relevant and useful to our users.  What I found interesting was not the common elements, but the uncommon elements I found.

Peggy Johnson (2014) outlined several criteria I have not seen written about in such depth in any other list.  These uncommon elements when selecting e-resources included:

• The provider’s business model
  • Is access time based or do you own the content?
  • How is the cost determined? Access based, site licence, or pay per view?
  • Do you have D.R.M (Digital Rights Management) to copy, print, save?
• What is the persistency of content?
  • Does the content remain unchanged during license?
  • Do you have permanent access to content after agreement ends?
• Functionality of User Interface
  • Will users be able to use it intuitively?
  • Can they search, bookmark, go to the table of contents?
• Ease of Authentication – protects privacy and allows control, but needs to be simple
  • Username and password
  • Single Sign on
  • IP address Range
• Accessibility functions both technical (will it link to other resources and be available on different devices) and design (disability features)
• Local Service implications – Is there help or support?
• Does it have URL compliance?
• Output and delivery options – can you print, bookmark, highlight
• Compatibility – Does it work with different devices?
• Is it a duplication or a replacement?
• Can you access data to measure effective use – COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources) – econtent should be COUNTER compliant.
• Deselection – can you switch out titles? Are resources available elsewhere?

All libraries are aiming for “affordable, practical, perpetual, or permanent access to content” (Johnson, 2014, p27).  To achieve this, within a budget, requires librarians to make decisions based on their particular library’s situation and the teachers and students who use it.

References

Fieldhouse, M., & Marshall, A. (2013). Collection development in the digital age. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

Johnson, P. (2014). Developing and managing electronic collections: the essentials. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

Queensland Government Department of Education. (2018). Collection development and management. Retrieved from http://education.qld.gov.au/library/support/collection-dev.html