Collection Development Philosophy
Falvey Library supports the teaching, learning, and research needs of the entire Villanova University community - including undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff - by building healthy and robust library collections through active conversations with campus communities and strong collaborations with internal and external partners.
Falvey Library advances knowledge on campus, promotes information discovery and access, encourages intellectual curiosity, and empowers our users by providing timely and critical information resources. The library understands the impact of evolving information technologies, changing scholarly communication practices, new forms of information seeking behaviors, and learning styles in a networked world. The library acknowledges the interdisciplinary nature of academic resources and firmly believe in free and open access to knowledge, freedom of expression, diversity, interculturality, and inclusion in all our collections. As such, we promote open access educational resources, zero-cost classroom texts, and DRM free e-resources whenever possible when making collection building decisions.
Collection development at Falvey Library is the responsibility of the Collection Management Committee and the subject librarians. Librarians are assigned to each academic department at Villanova and are responsible for developing the collections in those departments. Working closely with faculty, subject librarians assess the quality and appropriateness of new and existing resources and collaborate with faculty in both the selection and deselection of those resources. Subject librarians also serve on one of three disciplinary teams (Humanities, Social Sciences, STEM) and work closely with their colleagues in collection building efforts within those teams.
Falvey Library is committed to providing access to a wide variety of information formats including, but not limited to, scholarly journal and periodical databases, print and electronic books, manuscripts, data sets, archives, and special collections. The choice of format for these resources is dependent upon cost, availability, physical and electronic storage space, technological compatibility, and changes in the academic publishing environment. The Library acknowledges that financial and human resources are limited and that we need to approach collection building in a smart and proactive way to satisfy the information needs of both on-campus and distance learning patrons. Therefore, the Library prioritizes electronic resources and avoids duplicates in multiple formats. Falvey Library participates in several consortia and actively pursue new collaborations with external organizations to share resources cooperatively.
This collection development philosophy applies only to the general collections of Falvey Library. A separate collection development philosophy is available for distinctive collections.