Collection Level Description

2. What is a Collection?

2.1 A Library Perspective

Harrod's librarians' glossary (8th ed. London, 1995) gives the following definition of a library collection:

A number of books or other items on one subject, or of one kind, or collected by one person or organisation.

Also given is a definition of a special collection:

A collection of books connected with local history, celebrities, industries, etc., or on a certain subject or period, or gathered for some particular reason, in a library which is general in character. The following paragraphs attempt to elaborate on the different types of library collections. It should be noted that there is overlap between the various categories.

Subject collections

There are several types of subject collections:

1. A complete library: a special library is an example of a subject collection which is a complete library, e.g. the Advocates Library, St Bride Printing Library, where the vast majority of library materials will be on a single subject. These types of collections will normally be developed by the acquisition of new materials on the same subject.
2. A subject collection within a library: a collection of material on a particular subject kept together within a larger general collection, and usually with a distinct name, e.g. the Graham Brown Collection in the National Library of Scotland - a collection of some 20,000 items of Alpine and mountaineering literature; and the Warden Collection consisting of around 4,600 printed items comprising books, pamphlets and runs of periodicals on shorthand, and including some texts reproduced in shorthand. These types of collections will either be added to, as in the case of the Graham Brown collection, by the availability of funding to supplement the original collection, or a 'dead' collection as in the case of the Warden Collection, where no material is added.
3. A dispersed collection within a library: a collection of material on a single subject, but not kept together and not referred to by a specific name. A university library, for example, will normally have a 20th-century English literature collection, but the monographs and serials might well be shelved in different areas of the library building; any relevant manuscript material will almost certainly be stored elsewhere. In the case of closed access libraries, such as the National Library of Scotland, collections may be arranged by some other facet than subject. The basic arrangement in NLS is by size within very broad subject groups (humanities, science, fiction, etc.); the NLS collection of 20th-century English literature is therefore completely dispersed throughout all its collections; access has to be through catalogues and guides.
4. A collection may also be kept together because of its important association rather than, or in addition to, the subject matter itself. The Newhailes Library Collection in NLS, for example, is a large part of the library of the Dalrymple family, formed mainly by Sir David Dalrymple (1726-92), Lord Hailes, and is the most important contemporary collection to survive from the period of the Scottish Enlightenment and reflects the interests and achievements of a central figure in 18th-century Scottish history.

Form collections

A collection of library materials can be shelved by form, rather than by subject. It is common for serials to be shelved in a separate sequence. It is also normal for non-print material to be shelved away from printed material, so that material such as tapes, videos, CD-ROMs and microforms form separate collections in many libraries. It is also common for collections of government or official publications collections to be stored by form, or origin, of publication, as this is usually more helpful to users of the collections.

User collections

Some specialised collections can be arranged specifically for a particular group of users. The collections of the National Library for the Blind will contain material on many subjects and in more than one form, but the common factor is the needs of the users - the blind and partially sighted.

Database collections

Access to a collection of online databases, or to a collection of networked CD-ROMs, is another type of collection. These collections will normally be linked by subject, as well as by form.

Distributed collections

A collection may also be distributed, i.e. shared among several libraries. Australian libraries operate a Distributed National Collection, defined as:

The aggregation of all collections in Australia which are recorded in generally accessible databases and are accessible, either in person or via inter-library loan, to users with bona fide reasons for access;

and

comprehensive in relation to Australiana and selective in relation to the rest of the world as present and future needs of Australia require.

The Research Collections Online project being developed by the Scottish Confederation of Research Libraries (SCURL) contains examples of cases where an individual library may not have a research level collection in a given subject, but where a group of two or three libraries with collections just below research level can collectively provide a distributed research level collection.

Virtual collections

A recent development is that of the virtual or digital collection, where a selection of material on a particular subject is made available online. An interesting example is the `Studies in Scarlet' project, co-ordinated by the Research Libraries Group (RLG), where research material on marriage and sexuality in the United States and the United Kingdom, 1815-1914 is being brought together and made available digitally. The core material is being contributed by the Harvard University Law Library, the University of Leeds Library and the New York Public Library, with details of supporting case studies supplied by another four United States libraries and archives. Interestingly, the material in this digital collection started life as a distributed collection.

Jim Murray, National Library of Scotland