Collection development: birth of contemporary foundations

Abstract

This study presents the results of a research with the aim of identifying the correspondence between the foundations of the area now known as collection development and those established in the nineteenth century, in order to rebuild the main concepts, methods and practices in the area. To make this match feasible, an exploratory study as proposed, of eight selected works of NineteenthCentury European authors, the majority of them being recognized bibliophiles, namely: Peignot (1823), Namur (1834), Hesse (1841), Rouveyre (1878), Richard (1883), Gräsel (1893), Petzholdt (1894) and Maire (1896). The works of the Nineteenth Century from three contemporary categories of the area were analyzed: collection development, selection and acquisition, through a literature review research method. It was concluded that the phenomenon of information explosion has affected the process of collection development as a whole, since the Eighteenth Century. The Nineteenth-Century authors selected for this study provided several solutions to deal with the complexity of the phenomenon of information explosion, in which strengthened what that nowadays is called the approach based on access to information.