In days of global economic distress, libraries implementing geospatial collections and GIS services must ensure that users will be able to make the greatest possible use of its capabilities and functions since business, public administration and environmental management strategies rely heavily upon geospatial information and technologies (Boxall, 2004). The aim of this study is to explore the collection development policies of libraries with geographical collections and GIS services worldwide and describe their main features. Specifically, it attempts to provide insight into answering the following research questions: a) What are the main features of geospatial collection development policies (GCDPs)? b) Do geospatial collection development policies include features that reflect the adjustment of libraries to the rapid growth of open geospatial data? c) Do the existence geospatial collection policies reflect the adjustment of libraries to limited financial means the last few years? Our survey revealed a quite large number of features provided in the geospatial collection development policies. Characteristics mentioned by each of these policies grouped together so to isolate what was common to all and highlight those referred to specific cases. According to the findings characteristics in the majority of examined libraries policies’ and which ranked in the first place are: 1) Date created/revised/updated/ 2) Person related to/responsible for collection development policy 3) Collection Guidelines 4) Collection Purpose 5) Use/Licensing/Restrictions/Copyright 6) Governmental sources 7) Cooperative arrangements and related collections. Driven by the features’ analysis, we could note that the rapid growth of open geospatial data is reflected in GCDPs, since in the majority of libraries the main data sources are governmental followed by depository programs. Finally, although a large amount of geospatial data in library collections comes from commercial agencies, there are two features in libraries’ policies that indicate their adjustment in reduced economic conditions: the existence of free public data (governmental, municipal, local etc) and the information regarding cooperation. The work presented in this paper seeks in gaining better insight of the features that librarians in academic libraries outlines as the most important, so to include in their GCDPs.