Vicki Gregory. Collection Development and Management for 21st Century Library Collections: An Introduction. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2011. 260p. alk. paper, $75 (ISBN 9781555706517). LC2011-009274

Vicki Gregory enters a textbook market dominated by Edward Evans' many editions of Developing Library and Information Center Collections and, more recently, by Peggy Johnson's Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management. Other introductory texts exist, as do many narrower collection management (CM) works focused by type of library, by material format, or by specific subtopics (such as collection policies or evaluation). Evans' most recent edition reaches over six hundred pages; and Johnson's second edition, four hundred pages. Both are thorough treatments. Both, like the work at hand, attempt to include all types of libraries , yet favor academic libraries where all authors have their greatest grounding. Johnson's titling of her sweeping work " Fundamentals " is an acknowledgement that the span of collection management stretches easily beyond any single work. Where does collection management end and acquisitions, e-resources management , cataloging, or even government documents begin? Collection management , as all full-time practitioners know well, is an area with no clear boundaries, diffusing into all areas of librarianship. This creates a challenging task for the all-in-one CM textbook author. Gregory, who is on the faculty of the University of South Florida School of Library and Information Science, brings thirty-five years of experience to this work, with the most recent twenty-five as a faculty member. She is the author of three other library science texts and teaches collection development. She considers her primary audience here to be graduate students and retool-ing librarians, and she correctly determines that there is room in the marketplace for a collection management text that is truly introductory , as her subtitle indicates. This work does not directly compete with Evans or Johnson in scope, authoritative tone, or depth. It is a sufficient overview of the field, written in an easily read conversational style with the information presented concisely; there is hardly a page lacking a bulleted list of summary points regarding attributes, aspects, or criteria pertinent to the topic at hand. In a demanding, fast-paced collection management graduate class, this text's twelve chapters, occupying approximately 175 text pages (excluding end-of-chapter material, references, and suggested readings), might properly occupy the first two weeks of a three–semester-hour CM class, grounding the class in concepts and terminology. From there, an instructor would use other readings to draw in more detail licensing, collection policies, budgets, individual and peculiar format concerns, and other key CM elements. Particular strengths here are the …