Collection Reflection

Can we talk, for a minute, about things that aren't books? Don't get me wrong, I love books. I do. I always have. And, honestly, I can't even imagine that a day will come when I will disavow them. Not even for a million dollars. Not even for ten mill.....well, let's not go quite THAT far. But, the point remains, I love books so this is not even close to an anti-book screed. And, I understand that books and literacy are, and have been, the cornerstone of libraries. That's wonderful. Encouraging literacy, and a love of reading, is a fantastic thing to be associated with your organization/profession. I can't think of many people who would argue against these things, and it makes for wonderful, heart warming stories to share with people who hold the purse strings. But, libraries have been circulating things OTHER than books for a long time. In fact, I don't know that I can remember a time when libraries only had books. Even the tiny library in my hometown...

Following my own advice from yesterday's  post on collection maintenance , I checked in and organized all the young adult graphic novels (with the blessing of the YA librarian). Leaving aside the manga for another day, I estimate that we have over 400 YA graphic novels (on the shelf). Upon checking them in, I found: 19 items marked "missing" 3 items marked "lost" 4 items with holds 2 items with notes/cataloging problems 2 graphic novels from the adult collection 1 YA paperback 1 item marked "display" I also pulled out several items to potentially move to another part of the library (e.g., a Garfield collection that could go live with the other Garfield collections). The process took less than three hours, for which I was also on desk. Right after I finish these tasks, I always have a strong urge to hover protectively near the section and put things away as soon as people use them, but I also know (in my rational moments) that a messy colle...

So, you've ordered the books, and they're on the shelves! And you weed them occasionally. Maybe you even weed them on a set schedule, instead of when the shelves are overflowing and the pages start pleading with you to do something about them! Aside from weeding, here are some steps I recommend doing as frequently as possible to make sure that your collection looks presentable and is represented accurately in the catalog. As always, I recommend approaching your collection in manageable chunks, which for this exercise should be 1,000 items or less. If you're low on time, run a list of the items in one part of the collection that have "trouble" or out of the ordinary statuses: missing lost or lost and paid billed claims returned in process repair in transit Go through (or send a minion, if you are lucky enough to have minions) and look for these trouble items. You'd be surprised how many of these items are actually sitting on the shelf where they...

If you are responsible for collection development in just about any size or kind of library, the chances are good that there's been a recent push to reduce the size of your print reference collection.* Print reference materials are, to use a regional expression, wicked expensive. They are also being used less and less as librarians turn to databases and patrons turn to the immediate gratification of the internet. As budgets decline and libraries look to use their space in new and creative ways, physical reference collections are obvious targets for heavy weeding. Here at my library, we are reducing our reference collection by 50%. At our branches, reference collections will be cut by 75% . . . this time around. So where do you start when you are lucky enough to get the assignment to chop chop chop? Before You Begin Get a firm idea of how much the administration wants to reduce the reference collection. Survey the collection and determine how much you're going to have to weed...

Unless you work in a small library, the chances are good that more than one person selects the nonfiction. This is usually a good thing, because the collection benefits from the different perspectives that selectors bring to their work. It can be a problem when selectors pay less attention to one area than another (especially in terms of weeding and upkeep) or when the selector doesn't know much about the area they're responsible for, both in terms of subject matter and how that part of the collection is used by patrons. Public librarians are supposed to be generalists, but ideally they would order books in subject areas that they were moderately familiar with. However, there are more subject areas than there are librarians, so inevitably there is going to be a situation where librarians are ordering books on topics in which they have zero personal investment. When I first started working at my library, my department head put me in charge of the 800-829 Dewey range (American ...