ABSTRACT
KEYWORDS. Audiovisual materials, library collections, academic libraries, nonprint media
INTRODUCTION
When the author was first asked to write about collections of nonprint media in academic libraries, she thought it would be a straightforward task to examine published data about library holdings for the current year and one or more previous years, see what a comparison of the statistics for the various years suggested, and write it down. Two things shattered that pleasant dream: first, the published data she had expected to find were not available for the current year; and, second, the entire environment has changed dramatically in the several years prior to this writing, but the changes aren't yet reflected in libraries' reports about their holdings. Regarding the latter issue, the fact that electronic resources are not "held" as items librarians can hold in their hands and store on library shelves may result in our never being able to determine exactly who has access to which online resources or how many online resources individual libraries "collect" for their users.
