Mission Statement

  1. Provide a forum for communication and cooperation among health sciences librarians charged with responsibility for selection, retention, and deselection of library materials;
  2. Promote the education of health sciences librarians in general, and those responsible for collection development in particular, in matters relating to the philosophy, design, conduct and evaluation of collection development and evaluation of collection development programs;
  3. Provide a resource group among the membership of MLA which will be available to coordinate, propose, support or study along or in conjunction with other related bodies, issues and practices relevant to the development of library collections in health sciences institutions.
    (Article II, Collection Development Section Bylaws, Revised 2002)

News and Announcements


The Spring Developments newsletter is available.

The 2010 winners of the Daniel T. Richards prize are Barbara S. Shearer, Carolyn Klatt and Suzanne P. Nagy  for their article “Development of a new academic digital library: a study of usage data of a core medical electronic journal collection” published in the Journal of the Medical Library Association.   (See full citation below). 

The award will be presented to the authors at the Medical Library Association annual meeting in Washington, D.C.   

Full citation: Development of a new academic digital library: a study of usage data of a core medical electronic journal collection Barbara S. Shearer, Carolyn Klatt, and Suzanne P. Nagy J Med Libr Assoc. 2009 April; 97(2): 93–101. doi: 10.3163/1536-5050.97.2.005. PMCID: PMC2670205

Feedback/suggestions/news items - send to: Holly Phillips