ABSTRACT
In times of economic constraint, collection-holding institutions world-wide face similar challenges. Among critical issues of concern is the need to marry a decrease in resources and the growing numbers of orphaned collections with continual requests for new acquisitions. The result is a pressing need to improve the quality and efficiency of collection management, and particularly collecting. An initial and essential step to the elaboration of any national or international strategy on issues such as collection development is the examination of present collections: that is, where they are and what they contain. To achieve this in Canada, information on natural sciences collections was compiled from specific survey reports and collection indexes.1
