General Collection Guidelines
To support a progressive undergraduate liberal arts curriculum, the library collects materials on all geographical areas of the world and covers all time periods.
Items for the collection will be purchased primarily in the English language and languages which support the college curriculum.
General Selection Criteria:
- Relevance to curriculum
- Appropriateness for our primary clientele (language, format, audience, reliability, etc.)
- Favorable reviews in the professional literature
- Recommendations by subject bibliographies/lists
- Author/publisher reputation
- Cost
- Condition
- Relationship to items currently in the collection
- Importance to a field of study/discipline
- Organization, indexing, scope, currency and accuracy
Normally We Will Not Collect the Following:
- Materials aimed at high school or younger audiences, except for items in the Curriculum Library
- Highly specialized, research-level materials, which may be accessed more cost effectively through interlibrary loan
- Pamphlets and ephemeral materials
- Print textbooks (unless written by Hope College faculty or included in the Curriculum Library’s textbook collection for K–12 education)
- Popular fiction and non-fiction more suitable for a public library, with the notable exception of materials in the Browsing Collection
(Last revised October 2020.)