









































156  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

P and/or E: That Is (Still) the 
Question (Or Is It?)
Collection Development in a Post-pandemic 
World
Steve Perisho, Seattle Pacific University
Juliana Morley, Biola University
David Schmersal, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary

ABSTR AC T While the question of whether to choose the print and/
or electronic format of a given title is certainly not new, the circum-
stances in which we are making such decisions have changed, 
prompting many of us to reconsider collection development priori-
ties. Three librarians share their observations in answering three 
interrelated questions: (1) How did limited access to print collec-
tions affect student research behavior and faculty expectations 
in the course of the pandemic? (2) What strategies have libraries 
adopted to provide access to print-exclusive content? and (3) What 
criteria do they use in determining whether print or digital format is 
more suitable for a given title? While electronic resources certainly 
offer advantages, those who make and/or inform collection devel-
opment decisions would do well to consider potential pedagogical 
implications of format as well as the ways in which providing access 
to electronic format exclusively may affect our ability to serve library 
patrons beyond the seminary community, including alumni and 
local clergy.

DESCRIPTION

While the question of whether to choose the print and/or electronic 
format of a given title is certainly not new, the circumstances in 
which we are making such decisions have changed, prompting many 
of us to reconsider collection development priorities. If, as seems 
likely, the changes accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic—offer-
ing many if not all classes online, enabling many students and staff 
to work remotely—represent a watershed, prioritizing e-books and 
other electronic resources is a logical response. Of course, not every-



thing is available electronically, so how can we make print-only 
sources available to students who do not have physical access to the 
library? Conversely, what about our print collections? When and why 
might one still prefer print, even when it is not substantially cheaper, 
or the only option? How might we continue to serve patrons who 
only have access to our print collections, such as alumni and local 
clergy, if we are acquiring most of our new resources electronically? 
Here follows a guided discussion of these and related questions. A 
panel of our colleagues share their strategies for providing access to 
print-exclusive content, as well as their decision-making processes, 
identifying criteria they use in determining whether print or digi-
tal format is more suitable for a given title and sharing factors that 
inform such decisions. (In the live session, time was also reserved for 
our participants to share their own experiences and observations, 
as well as questions, for the benefit of all in the session.) 

INITIAL REMARKS: 

As we have been forced to realize that online theological education 
and remote work are not only possible, but have some advantages, 
this will doubtless affect the kinds of materials we acquire and the 
ways in which we make them available. Where, then, do our print 
collections fit into this?

To guide our consideration of this larger question, we structured 
our discussion around three pertinent sub-questions:

1) What changes have you noted in patrons’ information-seeking 
behavior over the course of “COVID-tide”? 

2) How have you adapted your services to make your print 
collections available to patrons while the library has been 
closed, and to what extent do you anticipate continuing such 
adaptations?

3) To the extent that you have a say in acquisitions decisions, 
what factors do you consider in determining whether to select 
print or electronic format for a given title, and how might 
changes wrought by the pandemic alter the relative weight of 
these factors going forward?



158  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

(1) WHAT CHANGES HAVE YOU NOTED IN PATRONS’ 
INFORMATION-SEEKING BEHAVIOR OVER THE COURSE OF 

“COVID-TIDE”? (STEVE PERISHO)

The following observations are based on five academic quarters at 
Seattle Pacific University during the pandemic.

During the 2020 Spring and Summer terms the print-based 
General and Reference collections were unavailable except via a 
limited amount of formal and informal liaison-mediated scanning. 
Consortial borrowing was likewise unavailable, though we were 
able to use InterLibrary Loan for articles (though not many books) 
inaccessible via SPU systems. An even heavier emphasis was placed 
on the purchase of e-books, as well as the emergency collections 
made available by others. Although consortial and ILL along with a 
mediated form of General Collection borrowing had all been largely 
restored in time for the opening of Autumn Quarter 2020 (all via 
contactless pickup), the legacy or print-based portion of the Refer-
ence Collection remained inaccessible.  That and the prohibition of 
stack-browsing in general aside, this represented an almost complete 
return to the status quo ante—indeed, a kind of enhancement of it, 
given that the chapter-scanning service aforementioned, instituted 
by the Spring of 2020, was completely new to SPU. And yet requests 
for reference and research support in Theology were—just as over 
ATLANTIS and other Atla listservs, too—all down.

As for remote teaching and assignment support, I offered that in 
three main areas over the course of the past five quarters:  Philoso-
phy; undergraduate Gateway and Seminary Core courses in Chris-
tian Scripture; and the disciplinary Writing courses taught by our 
theologians.

The Seminary Core courses, but especially the undergraduate 
Gateway courses in Christian Scripture, have long expected a lot of 
our students exegetically, and by extension, therefore, demanded a 
heavy use of the major tools, some of which (e.g., the lexica, the theo-
logical wordbooks, and some of the Bible dictionaries and encyclope-
dias above all) are unavailable here in electronic form.  This remote 
inaccessibility—which is due to (1) a Library-wide policy against the 
acquisition of software that must be restricted to a limited number 
of “stations,” “seats,” or “labs” as well as (2) the fact that neither the 
School of Theology nor the Library has chosen to underwrite indi-
vidual subscriptions—has resulted for years and years in a very 



Panel Discussions  159

heavy use of the Reference Collection, in the vicinity of which SPU 
undergraduates and seminarians all tend to camp out for days at a 
time.  (“Who said print is dead?”)

With the closure of the Reference Collection to all but staff, not 
to mention a shift to online instruction that resulted in fewer (and 
evermore inconvenient) trips to campus, this, of course, all went 
away.  During the pandemic, professors, who, stressed themselves, 
had also been encouraged to go easy on their students have, as a 
consequence, mined their own personal software packages, supply-
ing their students with the entries that they would otherwise have 
scanned for themselves (a problematic practice at best), and/or 
advertised the scanning services offered by the ILL Department. They 
also seem to have lowered their expectations considerably and not 
pushed their students hard into the search for scholarship, as before.

In response, I have double-purchased e-commentaries in droves, 
offered to drive down to the Library and scan, and asked students to 
share their search screens, with very positive results (though I cannot 
speak to follow-through because I do not grade student papers). A few 
students, and fewer each quarter of the pandemic, have taken me up 
on the offer to scan, but without, of course, having done any of the 
pedagogically important preliminary work that access to print-based 
Reference would have allowed, as in former times.

In working with students and faculty in WRI 1100, I have contin-
ued to teach research, while also letting students know about the 
placement of scanning requests, contactless pickup, and consortial 
and ILL borrowing. I have scanned materials and mounted entry lists 
to facilitate the placement of formal scanning requests from works of 
reference (here is an example from our freshman course in The Chris-
tian Faith:  https://spu.libguides.com/c.php?g=1043593&p=7570675). 
As with the Gateway and Core Courses in Scripture, a few students, 
and (again) fewer each quarter of the pandemic, have availed them-
selves of my offer to help them individually.  The vast majority have 
not sought any help whatsoever.  Though I neither see nor grade the 
final submissions of any of them, my presumption is that the employ-
ment of SPU, consortial, and ILL materials, online as well as on paper, 
is—as I feared at the outset it would be (along with faculty standards 
and requests for research assistance)—way down.

Nor are these trends limited to courses in the humanities. A 
colleague in science and medicine has observed that even before 
the pandemic, students exhibited a sharp decline in willingness to 

https://spu.libguides.com/c.php?g=1043593&p=7570675


160  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

use print sources, an inability to navigate online sources effectively, 
and a decline in the ability to distinguish between types of online 
sources, and therefore to cite them properly.  That’s far more of an 
endorsement of “providing access to electronic format exclusively” 
than—as my own comments so far would indicate—I am (or anyone 
in the humanities ought to be) ready to make, but contains also some 
observations of interest.

Drawing upon these observations, I offer the following takeaways: 
First, access to scholarship available only on paper remains—for the 
time being, at least—crucial to courses in theology and religious stud-
ies that happen to be tied to research (let alone, of course, research 
itself). However, for this to remain the case, faculty must maintain 
the expectation of rigorous scholarship on the part of their students, 
and librarians must find ethical and sustainable ways to provide 
and facilitate access to print scholarship, in addition to continuing 
the shift to electronic access. This is so because the changes in infor-
mation-seeking behavior that I’ve seen, speaking anecdotally, have 
been, despite our efforts here in Seattle, largely reductive in nature.  
They seem to have involved that decline in standards and perfor-
mance (and therefore the need for a library) that I suspected would 
be the (also long-term?) result of the (arguably overly draconian?) 
response to the pandemic.

(2) HOW HAVE YOU ADAPTED YOUR SERVICES TO MAKE YOUR 
PRINT COLLECTIONS AVAILABLE TO PATRONS WHILE THE 
LIBRARY HAS BEEN CLOSED, AND TO WHAT EXTENT DO YOU 
ANTICIPATE CONTINUING SUCH ADAPTATIONS? (JULIANA 
MORLEY)

Biola University Library serves approximately 6,000 students and 
150 programs. The library currently has more titles available elec-
tronically than in print. We are primarily a residential campus. 
According to survey results, 97% of our students said they use the 
library in person, and 68% said they prefer to contact a librarian at 
the reference desk. When the pandemic hit, our faculty were very 
concerned about how their students would access our print collec-
tion, especially the biblical studies and theology material. I assured 
them that our online collections are very strong, but if they needed a 
print resource, there will be ways to access it. I also reminded them 



Panel Discussions  161

that we have been supporting online programs and students for 
many years, and that librarians are still here (remotely) to help them.

Like many of our colleagues, during COVID-19, we provided 
access to our circulating print collections through a pickup service 
by which students, faculty, and staff would request items online and 
pick up materials at the entrance to the library. We also made our 
reference and reserves material available to students by appoint-
ment at the entrance to the library. In addition, we launched a mail-
to-home service, which allowed students to request a book to be 
mailed to their home. We also augmented our ILL services to include 
a document delivery service, by which scans of journal articles and 
book chapters from the print collection could be requested.

The last thing we tried to market was our reciprocal borrow-
ing programs. Even during “normal” times, reciprocal borrowing 
programs were often underutilized because our students did not 
know about them. These programs allow our online students to 
gain access to print collections and to physical study spaces near 
them. They can also gain access to biblical and theological material 
that is only available in print, as well as access to special collections 
and public library material. While most libraries in California were 
closed, libraries in other states may have been open during this time.

Students and/or faculty currently have access to 250 institutions 
through the following reciprocal borrowing agreements:

• LINK+ (consortium of libraries in CA and NV)
• ACL (U.S. and Canada)
• Atla (U.S. and Canada)
• SCATLA (theological libraries in CA)
• SCELC (mostly CA)
• Other agreements (local institutions)
We have created a Reciprocal Agreements Chart to allow our 

students to search for libraries by location and easily apply for 
access: https://libguides.biola.edu/reciprocalagreements

(3) TO THE EXTENT THAT YOU HAVE A SAY IN ACQUISITIONS 
DECISIONS, WHAT FACTORS DO YOU CONSIDER IN 
DETERMINING WHETHER TO SELECT PRINT OR ELECTRONIC 
FORMAT FOR A GIVEN TITLE, AND HOW MIGHT CHANGES 

https://libguides.biola.edu/reciprocalagreements


162  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

WROUGHT BY THE PANDEMIC ALTER THE RELATIVE WEIGHT OF 
THESE FACTORS GOING FORWARD? (DAVID SCHMERSAL)

Acquisitions was only recently added to my responsibilities, so I 
am not drawing on a lot of experience. Still, even a brief time has 
offered a sense of the many factors that go into such decisions, and 
the pandemic has, if anything, made this more complex. Like many 
of you, initially we concentrated on acquiring as much electroni-
cally as possible. This continued and indeed accelerated a trend 
toward emphasizing e-books that began when we began planning 
for the renovation of the library, knowing that a bulk of our collec-
tions would be inaccessible for about two years. At the same time, as 
I was making more collection development decisions, I recognized 
that in some cases print may still be a better—or the only—option. I 
developed a mental flow chart, resembling the flow chart below, to 
help me weigh the relative merits of e-book versus print for a given 
title, based on the following factors:



Panel Discussions  163

AVAILABILITY
The fact remains that not everything is available for libraries to 
purchase as e-books. In our field of religion and theology, with five 
thousand years’ worth of back titles, this is not likely to change 
entirely, though it may change for a given title, which can make it 
a point to consider. It is also a point that requires careful, nuanced 
communication, since it does not really help to tell a faculty member 
that something is not available as an e-book when she has it on her 
Kindle. 

COST
This is an obvious factor, but not always as straightforward as one 
might think. While in many cases (though, not always) the print is 
less expensive, this does not always make it more cost-effective, since 
an e-book that allows unlimited users can equal the cost of buying 
only a second physical copy. Thus, cost must also be held in dialogue 
with another factor: use.

USE
Use (or anticipated use) is another complex factor. First, there is 
the question of who is likely to use this book. Since meeting the 
research and educational needs of our students, faculty, and staff is 
our primary directive, discerning and anticipating these needs must 
be our priority; this becomes even more vital, and complicated, as 
more students, from varied backgrounds and in diverse locations, 
avail themselves of the options afforded by online theological educa-
tion.

At the same time, while our students, faculty, and staff most 
certainly are our core constituency and it thus makes sense to privi-
lege them in acquisitions decisions, there are important reasons to 
consider the needs of community patrons and alumni, who often do 
not have off-campus access to e-books: (a) Making our collections, 
specifically our print collections, accessible to our communities, 
to local clergy and others, aligns with our institutions’ missions, 
whether it be serving the church as a seminary or serving the commu-
nity as a university. (b) It is a matter of hospitality, of making at 
least some of our collections accessible to the wider community and 
thus serving as a good public-facing “face” for our institutions. (c) 
Being hospitable and accessible toward the wider community 



164  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

is not only a good thing to do, it is also in our best interest to do 
so – alumni and community members are more likely to support an 
institution that is able to loan them a copy of the commentary they 
need for a Sunday school class the next day. Making our collections 
accessible to local clergy also creates a sense of good will toward our 
schools, and such good will might just be enough to incline clergy to 
recommend our school to parishioners and congregants who want 
to pursue theological education or attend seminary. Thus, titles that 
may appeal to local clergy and other community patrons are an 
important, if secondary, factor to consider. 

Second, there is the question of whether anyone is asking for this 
title, and if so, for what purpose, i.e., is a faculty member asking us 
to purchase this book for his or her own research? Is this a course 
reserve and if so, is the course being offered on campus or online? 
If a given book is required reading for a course, and thus likely to be 
a high-demand item, it is probably more cost-effective to purchase 
a UU e-book, even though it is more expensive than one copy of the 
print. On the other hand, if a faculty member would like a book 
for his or her own research, unless he or she is likely to use it as a 
required text in a future course, a 1U copy or print should suffice. 

Third, there is the question of how sustainable demand is likely 
to be. A professor is always going to assign Augustine’s Confessions 
for some class at some point, and given the fact that some of our 
students still prefer to read books in print, it makes sense to offer 
such books in both formats, if possible. But what about books on hot-
topic contemporary issues? How many books on 9/11 have you circu-
lated in the last few years? How many have you weeded? E-books 
may be a better option for books that are likely to be in high demand, 
but for a short time. The shelf space I save in the long term may be 
worth the few extra dollars I would pay for an e-book on COVID-
19 that I would have to weed in ten years or so (while hoping that 
someone will keep an archival copy for the sake of future research-
ers, which brings up the question of preservation, for another time).

Fourth, there is the question of how much of a given book is 
likely to be used. For example, if it is likely that students (and others) 
will only need one essay out of The Oxford Handbook of XYZ, and I 
can scan said chapter from the print, and the print is significantly 
cheaper, it probably makes sense to choose the print. 

Finally, there is the pedagogically significant question of whether 
print can be more conducive for sustained, concentrated reading. 



Panel Discussions  165

While time and space preclude an in-depth consideration of this 
question here, I have heard such sentiments echoed by students 
who express appreciation for the fact that a print book does not ding 
every time they get an email. 

Moreover, choosing print or electronic format, and the way we 
use this format, can have pedagogical implications. Many online 
and electronic resources are based on a print analogy (division into 
volumes, page numbers), and students who are unfamiliar with 
print may find navigating electronic sources challenging. As another 
example, mutatis mutandis, when I use Accordance it is so easy to see 
the parsing information for a given Greek word, that I find myself 
becoming lazy and not even trying to discern the lexical form. This 
does not mean I do not, or should not, use Accordance, but that I 
need to be aware of how I am using it and whether it best serves my 
purpose in studying, i.e., am I preparing a sermon or trying to retain 
at least some of the Greek grammar I learned in seminary. 

I hope it is apparent from what has preceded, but to make it clear, 
I in no way mean to suggest a rejection of e-books. I have and will 
continue to read e-books, especially audiobooks, just as I have contin-
ued, and will continue, to read print. For the foreseeable future, I 
expect the same will be true of our libraries. But I hope that what 
we have presented here at least suggests that print should remain a 
viable option when making acquisitions decisions. 


