Current Collection Policy:

Recognizing that one of the goals of the Fondren Library is to increase access to full-text scholarly information, the library is committed to acquiring and facilitating uses of their electronic, full-text resources.

1. Principal considerations for acquisition of full-text electronic resources include ability to provide access and guidance to the digital resources, to integrate them into library service programs, and to ensure that the advantages of the digital resource are significant enough to justify its selection in digital format.

2. Priority will be given to digital resources that offer significant added value over print equivalents by including search tools, more extensive content, multimedia components or by accommodating the ability to invoke linkages to local and/or related resources, to annotate text, to transfer information.

3. Resources that display the full text as well as afford manipulation of texts (searching, concordancing, annotating, generating word lists, etc.) are preferred. Moreover, electronic full-text resources should afford educational or personal use by offering flexible options for saving and printing.

4. Data formats should follow industry standards and be fully documented. Data should be platform-independent and preferably available in a multiplicity of formats (i.e., ASCII, SGML, PDF, etc.). Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) format, an international standard for encoding document format and content, is preferred since it affords more detailed and flexible access to the content of full-text resources.

5. Interfaces should be easy to master by ordinary users. For this reason, Windows or Mac interfaces are preferred over DOS or other command-based interfaces.

6. Full-text electronic resources should be hard drive and memory efficient in relation to their respective capabilities.

7. Resources should include their own search tools. If they do not, they should provide information about options for accessing the texts. Costs for added software, fonts, or other applications that afford use of the material should be factored in to the total cost of the resource.

8. Resources should be able to work with existing library equipment. This will vary depending upon its designated location.

Full-text resources are defined broadly to include text, hypertext, images, audio, or other multimedia components. The Electronic Text Center will provide support for full-text electronic resources, particularly in the humanities, that have been acquired by collection development librarians. Some full-text resources, particularly reference tools, statistical data, and resources of general interest will be supported by other library departments, including Reference, Government Publications and Special Resources, and Reserves, or will circulate with the general collection.

1. Full-text electronic resources with accompanying software require greater support, and therefore, will generally not circulate. Resources that do not require separate installation software may circulate with regular materials.

2. Reference or Government Publications and Special Resources will give priority to the support of bibliographic and reference tools or statistical information. The Electronic Text Center will give priority to the support of specialized full-text collections and specialized electronic resources.

3. The Electronic Text Center will provide access to non-commercial electronic texts, particularly as more electronic texts produced according to international standards become publicly available.

4. The Electronic Text Center will support a variety of applications which facilitate greater access to electronic texts. This includes applications for text analysis, text markup, computational linguistic and language learning, and multi-lingual word processing to afford greater flexibility in the use of full-text resources.

5. Because scholarship and educational use of electronic texts involves responding to these resources in various ways, the Electronic Text Center will support software for the creating of electronic resources. These applications include markup programs for HTML and SGML, digital imaging and image manipulation tools, optical character recognition software, and other multimedia applications.

6. The Electronic Text Center, in cooperation with Public Services, will be responsible for assessing the impact of full-text resources in both users and public service operations.