A holistic approach to collection security implementation in university libraries

This study proposed the “house model” to construct an instrument to assess collection security implementation in university libraries. The factors and items are extracted from published literature on library security and library collection security issues. The instrument comprises five factors: collection security governance; operations and processes; people issues; physical and technical aspects of collection security and the security culture in the libraries. The instrument was tested on 61 senior and professional librarians from four Nigerian universities. Reliability tests indicate that all factors are relevant with Cronbach's alpha value of above 0.7 suggesting the reliability of the instrument for use in a wider sample.

► Explore factors related to collections security management for academic libraries. ► Items under each factor are mapped into a collection security assessment instrument. ► The instrument contains five factors, governance, processes, people issues, physical, security culture and awareness. ► The majority of the items registered Cronbach Alpha scores of 0.7 to above 0.8 indicating the instrument is valid. ► Libraries could gauge the status of their collection security implementation levels and identify risk areas.