APPENDIX: COLLECTING LEVEL INDICATORS

The Collecting level indicators3 and descriptions used in this collection policy document are as follows:

LEVEL 0: OUT OF SCOPE

The Library does not collect in this subject area.

LEVEL 1: MINIMAL

Few selections are made beyond introductory or very basic material.

LEVEL 2: BASIC INFORMATION

Collections at this level contain up-to-date materials which introduce and define a subject and which indicate the variety of information available elsewhere. Such a collection may include dictionaries, encyclopaedias, appropriate bibliographic databases, standard and significant works, handbooks, manuals, sound recordings and a few popular or major serials.

Such a collection can support general enquiries, school and some undergraduate instruction, and information at a popular level, but it is not sufficiently intensive to support advanced undergraduate courses.

LEVEL 3: INTERMEDIATE

Collections at this level contain a broad range of resources adequate to support undergraduate and most graduate instruction, sustained independent study, work-based interests or specialised enquiries. Such a collection is adequate to impart and maintain knowledge of a subject at less than research level intensity.

Such a collection will include a wide range of basic works, fundamental reference works and bibliographical works, significant numbers of classic retrospective titles, complete collections of works of the more important authors, selections from the works of secondary writers, a selection of representative serials and access to the appropriate databases.

LEVEL 4: RESEARCH

Collections at this level will contain both current and retrospective resources and will retain historical materials. Such collections will provide materials in all appropriate formats and languages including original material and ephemera, all important reference works, a wide selection of specialised monographs, a very extensive collection of journals and immediate access to bibliographies, abstracting and indexing services in the field, materials containing research findings and non-bibliographic databases.

Collections at this level will support postgraduate and independent research and will include all the major published source materials required.

LEVEL 5: COMPREHENSIVE

Collections at this level will include, as far as is reasonably possible, all significant works of recorded knowledge (publications, manuscripts and other information sources) in all applicable languages, for a necessarily defined and limited field. This level of collecting intensity is one that will maintain a special collection; the aim, if not the achievement, will be the exhaustive coverage of a specific subject area or discipline.

3These collecting levels are based on the Conspectus methodology, developed in the United States of America, which was used by libraries to analyse their collections by subject area and to assess its breadth and scope in terms of standard descriptions of collecting.

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