The results reported that although the management
and the negotiation of electronic journals
have been accepted and consolidated, some
reservations still remain about electronic book
collection development. This attitude emerged
from the analysis of the literature and it was
confi rmed both by the interviews with the two
key informants and by the librarians’ responses
gathered through the questionnaire. Even though
collection development guidelines for electronic
resources were set up by all the libraries involved
in the case study, the analysis of the results revealed
that the diffusion of the electronic book
collections does not keep pace with that of the
electronic journals. Considering the above issues,
how do librarians manage and plan subscriptions
to electronic book collections? The interviews
with the two key informants clarifi ed how, in Italy,
the issues related to electronic book collection
development policies are still under discussion.
Monographs purchased as e-books are often
considered as an addition of the same titles in
print format, already available in the library
holdings, or they are subscribed to by individual
university faculties. Focusing on the matter related
to the budget limitation, the key informants paid
attention to the business models proposed by
publishers to the academic libraries. Apart from
few examples, publishers offer libraries to purchase
or to subscribe to defi ned subject e-book
collections and do not allow any ‘pick and choose’
option. In this way, acquisition librarians cannot
freely choose which titles should or should not
be acquired or subscribed to and consequently
cannot fully develop good-quality e-book collections.
In this regard, the key informants reaffi rmed
the importance of the consideration of a new collection
development approach that leads librarians
to deal with new issues, involving: