Collection Policies

PURPOSE

The Department of Occupational and Technical Studies offers five majors leading to a Bachelor of Science degree. These majors include: (1) marketing education, (2) technology education, (3) training specialist, (4) fashion, and (5) industrial technology.

At the graduate level, the department offers a Master of Science in Education. The three concentration areas available are:

§         community college teaching (occupational and technical)

§         Middle/secondary career and technical education teaching

§         Business and industry training (training professionals)

A major within the Certificate of Advanced Study is offered jointly with the Department of Educational Leadership and Counseling. There is a cognate in human resources development for students in the urban education concentration of the PhD in Urban Studies. This cognate includes several courses in adult education.  Additionally available are licensure-only programs in technology education and in marketing teacher education.

Students seeking the Master of Science in Engineering—Modeling and Simulation Concentration, Simulation-based Instruction, take at least 7 OTED graduate-level courses.

A large number of the OTS (Occupational and Technical Studies) and OTED (Occupational and Technical Education) courses are broadcast from Gornto, the Peninsula Center and the Virginia Beach Center to distance learners.

GENERAL COLLECTION GUIDELINES

Language Guidelines: English will be the primary language of the collection. English language translations of foreign works will be collected on a selective basis. Non-English language materials will generally not be collected except in special circumstances.

Chronological Guidelines: The collection focuses on works of current practice and research in marketing, business, technology and vocational education, training and development, fashion, and merchandising. Historical works will be collected selectively.

Geographical Guidelines: In all subject areas American practice is emphasized. However, the areas of marketing and technology offer opportunities to selectively review materials published internationally.

Treatment of Subject: Materials at the undergraduate level will be collected broadly in all subject areas. A narrower range of materials will be collected at the graduate level and in supporting specialty areas of faculty research.

Types of Material: The Library will collect scholarly monographs including bibliographies, conference proceedings and reference works. Serials that support the curriculum will be collected with an emphasis on those involving marketing and technology. Many state and federal publications support research in this area. Popular as well as scholarly works in fashion may be collected.

Electronic databases, indexes to scholarly journal articles, support research in the library and at remote sites and should continue to be acquired.

Date of Publication: Current materials published within the past five years will receive priority. Particularly in the areas of industrial technology, technology education, and fashion current materials will be emphasized.

Other General Considerations:

• Related Subject Policy Statements:
  Education
  Business
  Computer Science

• Other Resources:
• Area Resources:
• Popular works in the area of fashion and marketing may be found at local public libraries.
• Five universities in Virginia offer degrees in technology education. They are: Norfolk State, Old Dominion University, Virginia State University, Virginia Tech, and James Madison University.

• United States Government Publications:  The federal documents collection offers a number of publications which are useful in statistical research in the areas of marketing, industry, and technology. Some of these include the Statistical Abstract of the United States, importing and exporting publications, and Economic Census materials. Laws and regulations governing manufacturing, and employee safety and training are also collected. Many, if not most, of the resources are now delivered via the Internet rather than in paper format.

• Electronic Journals:  The library provides eleven electronic journals in the technical education field, four in the training field, and one each in fashion, industrial education, and marketing fields. Additionally, Journal of Industrial Education and Journal of Technical Studies are freely available through links on VPI’s Web site for electronic journals at: http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals.

• The Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA) project offers a number of electronic resources that assist patrons in locating articles in scholarly journals--and in some cases full-text of the articles. FirstSearch and InfoTrac are two resources which can be particularly helpful for OTS research, especially in the areas of education, business, and computer science.

SUBJECT DIVISIONS

Emphasis in Collecting by Subject

(1) Marketing Education: Works are collected on methods of teaching marketing and related subjects such as buying, advertising, and sales at the secondary level.

(2) Technology Education: Works are collected on methods of teaching technology education in the secondary and middle schools.

(3) Training Specialist: Works are collected on methods of designing, developing, and presenting training in business settings.

(4) Fashion: Works are collected on fashion history, buying, fashion coordinators, fashion designers and merchandise managers.

(5) Industrial Technology: Works are collected on manufacturing and production, industrial materials, and management concerns for persons entering industry as supervisors or trainers.

 COLLECTING CODES

key to collecting codes

Revised September 2002, Cynthia Swaine