Collection Development Philosophy

We are dedicated to building and stewarding collections that serve research and teaching at the university and support scholarship in Michigan and throughout the world. We define collections broadly to include physical and digital materials in a wide range of subjects and formats as well as electronic resources licensed by the library. The decisions we make regarding the acquisition and management of collection material are aligned with our mission and values, influenced by historical collecting strengths, and inspired by emerging areas of interest and need.

We strive to make our collection development efforts transparent and to shape them through purposeful and ongoing engagement with students, faculty, and other users. We acknowledge and seek to address systemic inequities and biases within the work of collection development, and we follow and contribute to best practices in the ethical stewardship of collection material. We advocate for open access, author rights, scholarly sharing, and user privacy within the ecosystems of creators, publishers, distributors, and technology providers. We embrace interdependence and pursue opportunities for inter-institutional collaboration to build, share, manage, and preserve collections. 

Our collection development activity is anchored by this philosophy and guided and informed by our collecting area statements.