Understanding the Nature of Design and Its Implications for Design Collection Development

This chapter is meant as an overview of collection development for design disciplines in higher education including selection, planning and assessment, budgetary issues, and marketing the collection. It addresses the specific challenges of design collection development to meet the technical, theoretical, and research components of the design curriculum. These challenges include its cross-disciplinarity, transition within the fields from technical know-how to whole system thinking, the selection of trade and academic materials, and format and access issues.