Best-Sellers in Academic Libraries

Gregory A. Crawford, Matthew Harris

Abstract

Libraries have important collection development decisions to make about best-sellers and popular culture materials. A selection of academic libraries was studied to follow the ownership of best-sellers from 1940 to 1990. The trend is to keep a higher percentage of older best-sellers in fiction than newer ones. Nonfiction appears to be more sporadic but still follows this basic trend. With the influx of popular culture studies, scholars potentially could lose valuable resources. From this study, libraries will see that a new set of collection development policies may need to be developed.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.62.3.216
Copyright Copyright © The Author(s)


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