The academic library, affectionately referred to as the heart of the campus due to its physical and metaphorical centrality to academic life, has undergone significant change since the 1990s. The advent of the internet and rapid advances in technology have wrought wide-ranging change in academic libraries. Although the library literature confirms the changing environment surrounding academic libraries and librarians, many library papers are individual accounts of processes and best practices with little connection to the literature on organizational change. This dissertation study focuses on changes in academic library collections and collection development and acquisitions (CDA) practices. The collection is perceived by administrators, faculty, students, and librarians themselves as centrally important to the library and the institution. Although the library collection is essential to teaching, learning, and research, it has received little attention in the higher education literature. I interviewed 14 librarians at two regional, public, research institutions in Michigan. Using Resource Dependence Theory (RDT) to frame this study and analyze the results, I examined the role of the external environment and its influence on the strategies academic librarians used to perform CDA work. Participants identified funding, curriculum, faculty, students, administrators, and vendors and publishers as environmental influences, indicating that the library functioned as a separate organization within its institution. Librarians employed a variety of strategies to manage environmental constraints, maintain balance, and preserve library and academic culture, including information gathering, communication, budgetary management, and relying on collection use data."--Page ii