SDSU Library Collections

In 2025, the library underwent a reorganization. As a part of the reorganization, the Collection Strategies unit is developing new policies and procedures designed to support the SDSU student and faculty research needs as best as possible with our limited financial and human resources.

These policies will be developed throughout 2025 and 2026, and updates will be added to this page as they are completed. The 2025 policies will supersede the current policy, but we will defer to existing policies until new policies are developed. If there is any conflicting or duplicative language between the two policies, only refer to the 2025/2026 policies.

Resilience: Sustainable Collection Development Principles:

The library seeks to develop sustainable strategies to maximize a limited collections budget that supports the curricular and research needs of our students and our faculty. We are committed to utilizing our limited resources to provide adequate support for our academic programs and adopting innovative approaches to continually evaluate our expenditures to meet these evolving needs.

• Students at Our Core - As a CSU Library that is largely funded by the state and the students, our primary focus is on resources that adequately support the curriculum, student research, and faculty research. We cannot purchase required course materials for every course because of budgetary limitations and the business models of textbook publishers and other rights holders. We partner with university stakeholders, such as the bookstore, to identify materials in required courses for high enrollment programs and courses that serve the general education requirements to maximize the impact of our budget. We also seek to educate the faculty on how to utilize existing library resources to provide no-cost pathways to lowering the cost to our students
• Access over Ownership - We use a "just in time" versus a "just in case" model of acquiring digital content to maximize our research support, and we leverage consortial relationships and new approaches to document delivery to expand the access to content for our students and researchers beyond our purchase and subscription budgets.
• We Value Print but Believe the Future of Print is Shared - While our collection development strategy prioritizes digital resources, we recognize the importance of print for certain disciplines. We will continue to purchase and support print monographs when the source is only available in print, when print is the most cost effective way to provide access, or when there is a curricular or research need for the print format. We also will leverage our shared print partnerships to maximize the access to print by avoiding duplicative purchases in our lending networks when it is reasonable to do so.
• Data-Informed Strategies - Identifying Essential Collection Needs - We will use usage data, overlap analyses, and other quantitative metrics to evaluate our ongoing commitments to ensure that our expenditures are meeting the needs of our students and researchers. We will also develop qualitative rubrics to assess qualities like uniqueness of the content or indexing and abstracting, specific disciplinary justifications, interdisciplinary value, representation of diverse and marginalized perspectives, and other factors. We will leverage the disciplinary expertise of our librarians to help make these determinations.
• Innovative and Diversified Approaches to Research Support - We will develop new approaches to creating opportunities to support research through innovative uses of our one-time funds that will not subject the university to ongoing, inflationary costs. In order to finance the increased needs of our new graduate programs, we will also seek new funding sources and develop cost sharing arrangements to purchase or license additional research resources.
• Sustainable Support for Open Access - The library budget, which is intended to increase information access, is not ample enough to cover the University's research and curricular needs, so the library does not provide direct Author Processing Charge (APC) support for faculty research. The library only provides APC support with select Read and Publish agreements that provide access to content with some APC waivers.These Read and Publish agreements are available from many publishers, but we evaluate the viability of these deals solely on the cost of the content access. We promote these opportunities to faculty in conjunction with truly open access avenues that do not charge APCs.

The SDSU Library is committed to maintaining its physical collection, but when materials are lost, missing, or damaged, it is important to evaluate whether expending additional resources to repair or replace those materials is appropriate or necessary. Books and Media are assessed using the following criteria. (Materials from the Imperial Valley Library and Special Collections and University Archives are exempt from the criteria for the General Collection because they manage their own physical material budgets and are governed by their own collection development policies.)

Books:

• If a book in the general collection has a SCLEC Shared Print retention commitment from SDSU, we automatically repair or replace the title (when it is available) unless there is a second copy in the general collection. In that case, we transfer the retention commitment to the other copy and remove the title from the collection.
• If a book is part of a special collection (like the Africana Studies Collection), we automatically repair or replace the title (when it is available) unless there is a second copy in the general collection. In that case, we transfer the other copy to the special collection.
• If a book is in the Hathitrust public domain, not part of a special collection (like the Gorey Collection), and does not have a SCLEC Shared Print retention commitment from SDSU, we automatically remove the title from the collection.
• If a book has a SCELC Shared Print retention commitment from a partner library, the book is not part of a special collection (like the Africana Studies Collection), and there are more than 2 copies in California and 50 copies in the United States in Worldcat, we automatically remove the title from the collection.
• All books that do not meet the criteria listed above will be subject to librarian review for 30 days. If the liaison librarian is on leave, another librarian will be selected as the reviewer by the Head of Collection Strategies. If the material is not reviewed within the 30 day period, it will automatically be withdrawn.

Media:

• If the physical media item has Public Performance Rights (PPR) associated with the purchase, the library automatically replaces the item.
• If the physical media item does Public Performance Rights (PPR) associated with the purchase, we automatically remove the item from the collection if it is available through one of our streaming platforms.
• All other items will be subject to librarian review for 30 days. If the liaison librarian is on leave, another librarian will be selected as the reviewer by the Head of Collection Strategies. If the material is not reviewed within the 30 day period, it will automatically be withdrawn.

The SDSU Library’s e-Resource and Renewal Evaluation policy is based on eight qualitative and quantitative assessment areas. The rubric linked below is used for the review and evaluation of e-Resources includes uniqueness, disciplinary value, accessibility, representation, and availability in addition to usage data. 

Database Evaluation Policy:

All resources with a cost per use (CPU) of more than $20 and inflationary increases greater than 5% are automatically reviewed.  

Based on a review by the Collection Strategies Team, resources with an average of less than 2.5 out of 4 across evaluation areas are not renewed.

Resources with a cost of over $5,000 are automatically cancelled after 3 consecutive years of more than $20 CPU unless the department(s) provide funds.

Alternatives are investigated for sources with two consecutive years of over 5% inflation.

All new requests are also evaluated with this rubric and added based on their scores and available funding.

Journal Evaluation Policy:

All Journals (with a minimum history of 3 Years) with a 3-year average of $100 or more CPU (Unique Investigation) across access points are automatically cancelled.

All journals (with a minimum history of 3 Years) with embargo periods of less than one year in aggregators with a 3-year average of $50 or more CPU are automatically reviewed. 

All packages (with a minimum history of 3 Years) are initially evaluated based on whether the individual cost/availability of titles with less than $50 CPU is significantly cheaper than the package.

All journals and journal packages with inflationary increases greater than 5% are automatically reviewed. 

We evaluate interlibrary lending data to prioritize new journal subscriptions based on our available funding. Journals with a higher per-article cost than the full journal subscription cost and journals whose articles are not readily available through interlibrary loan will be evaluated as potential subscriptions.

All new journal subscriptions will be subject to evaluation by these criteria after the first 3 subscription years.
 

The document below is the existing library Collection Development policy which xan also be found on the library's Policies & Guidelines page.