Library: Curricular Support for UNVA's Programs

The development of UNVA Library's collection development policies is designed to match the library's collection development strategy with UNVA's present and evolving academic programs.

UNVA's growing and evolving programs are taught in a multi-campus system in Manassas VA, Prague, Hong Kong, and Cyprus. Courses are taught online and on-site. Equal delivery of course materials necessitates equal access to library resources for students regardless of their respective locations.

Library Planning for Program Changes and New Programs

The library collection-development policy is designed to be flexible in application as the academic degree programs and certification courses continue to evolve.

Certification courses fall under the area of information technology (including very specific software and hardware aspects), business, environment, occupational safety and regulations, and ESL. Certification courses are designed to impart cutting-edge practical skills.  As a result, regulations, software, and business and environmental best practices change rapidly. Some certification programs are taught as online courses that include pre-selected information resources. As these programs progress, the inclusion of libraries of supporting documents and readings may change over time. Thus, the library's continued active collaboration with the teaching units is crucial in meaningfully supporting the courses.

Multi-Location Students And Library Resources

As maintaining duplicate print collections across all the campuses is impractical, the most efficient use of library acquisitions budgets is investing in well-rounded, high-quality online resources. Such resources including e-books and full-text scholarly journal databases can be centrally administered in Manassas and deployed to the other campuses with appropriate authentications and license agreements. As the research function of gathering resources has shifted increasingly online, students and faculty can only benefit from program-supporting online content.

Types of Materials Not Collected

Because the collection is geared to scholarly research and professional training, the library does not collect religious materials, juvenile books, and popular fiction. Although the library does not collect juvenile literature, this genre is discussed among other literature and literary criticism as covered in the e-book collection and the Literary Resource Center.

Textbooks, institute working papers and other teaching materials are generally not collected; occasional purchases and gift books may be added and placed in the Textbook Collection. Legal publications are acquired only selectively.

The library does not collect microfiche at this time.

Strengths and Weaknesses

In addition to an excellent combination of scholarly databases, UNVA's teaching and research needs are also supported by academic e-book collections. The combined collections from EBL and ebrary total approximately 110,000.

E-book collections subject breakdown:

Any assessment of collection strengths and weaknesses is a snapshot of library resources at the time of a given library analysis, in the context of existing and evolving programs. As more learning resources are acquired, the mix of strengths and weaknesses inevitably changes. Each program has its own set of characteristics and needs; therefore the library resources' strengths and weaknesses are detailed in each separate policy (accessible from the pulldown menus at the top of the screen and also from the policies listing).

Collection Levels used for all policies:

1. Research Level: Advanced and comprehensive collection supporting doctoral dissertations and independent research, as well as support for faculty in their doctoral-level course preparation and specialty-related research. Materials at this level should include: research reporting, new findings, scientific experimental results, and other primary documents and/or original research dissemination. Other resources at this level include: all important reference works, a wide selection of specialized books, e-books, instructional videos and streaming web-based instructional A/V materials; an in-depth collection of journals and e-journals; major in-depth full-text databases for indexing, abstracting, and full-text journal content.

2. Study Level: Thorough collections supporting baccalaureate and master's level coursework, master's theses, and project-based independent study, as well as support for faculty in their baccalaureate and master's level course preparation and specialty-related research. This level supports a general subject overview and some specialized knowledge, but is not as in-depth as the Research level. Materials include a wide range of books, e-books, workbooks (for example teacher's workbooks, lab manuals); materials providing study foundations such as A/V materials where appropriate to the academic discipline, core journals, e-journals and electronic full-text databases, and reference works.

3. Basic Level: Introductory collections to provide a basic subject overview. Materials include major encyclopedias, dictionaries, important bibliographies, a few major journals / e-journals, possibly drawing from general academic full-text databases already purchased for other subject areas.

4. Minimal Level: A few selections of either very basic works or occasional selections of specialized works in a narrow sub-field, but no systematic support of the subject area.

5. Not collected.

(site map: all policies)