When Choice was founded in 1963–64, its mission and intended audience were laudably clear and uncomplicated.  That mission was to identify and review books suitable for college libraries.  The intended audience consisted of academic librarians and faculty with collection development responsibilities.

It was Choice’s job to select and publish reviews of relevant titles, and our readers’ job to select and purchase titles for their respective libraries.  Both parties’ responsibilities were clearly defined, and their activities complementary.  Moreover, the entire process was essentially a closed loop in which the key participants, and often the only participants, were Choice and the library’s collection development team.  At the end of the day, if the participants had done their job, some appropriate number of new titles was added to the library collection, making them available to potential users, many of whom were blissfully unaware of the entire process, including the existence of a publication called Choice.

Fortunately for Choice, the self-evident virtues of such a clear and uncomplicated role have persisted over time.  Even now, Choice’s most important function is its role in the academic library collection development process.  The goal of that process, however, has evolved.  Simply adding potentially useful titles to the book collection “just in case” they might eventually be of use to patrons is no longer sufficient justification for a library’s materials budget.  Instead, the name of today’s collection development game is managing the library’s necessarily finite materials budget so as to provide patrons with access to the most materials of the greatest value to the largest possible number of potential users.  After all, what is the point of spending scarce library funds on a title of so little use to patrons that it remains forever nestled in the stacks, properly cataloged and safely preserved to be sure, but utterly unnoticed and unread?

In their efforts to ensure increased usage of their book collections, academic libraries face two separate but related challenges.  The first is discoverability, finding a way to make sure that users can easily and efficiently find titles that are relevant to their needs.  The second is what has sometimes been called “enrichment”: providing potential users with the information they need to quickly determine whether a specific title is, in fact, of interest to them.  Both challenges are exacerbated by the fact that today’s users expect to discover and select relevant materials online.  How then to encourage these users, who are less and less likely ever to set a foot in the stacks, to find and make use of relevant books from the library collection?

There are, of course, many possible answers to this question, but one of them, interestingly enough, involves Choice.  For while the library’s book collection may be housed in the stacks, Choice reviews are readily available online, and from a variety of sources.  Whether the problem is discoverability or enrichment, one of the potential answers turns out to be providing patrons with access to those clear, concise, and authoritative Choice reviews. Choice reviews aren’t just for collection development anymore.