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| Image by Sabine Schulte from Pixabay |
Collection development is a necessary part of library work. If we keep ordering new books, we have to have somewhere to put them. We can’t keep all the books or we would eventually run out of space and have to add on to our buildings or build new buildings. We need to maintain a balance between the new items we order and the items we must discard.
Most libraries have a set of tools to help us do this work
of collection development. We have
collection development policies set down by our director, managers and library
boards. We have a knowledge of our
patrons and what their likes and dislikes are.
We have the training that teaches us how to evaluate books based on
their age, usage, relevant information and condition. Many of us have expectations set up by our
supervisors or regular weeding and collection purchasing tasks. We read magazines that give us reviews on
books. We read books, books, and more
books to keep up with what’s popular. We talk to our friends, co-workers, other
librarians and patrons to find out what titles are new and exciting and which
ones don’t appeal. This is our box of
tools.
Today let’s talk about another tool—collection development
software. My library is currently
looking at getting rid of the software program we use and going back to using
software that is connected to our ILS (Integrated Library System). Different companies sell collection
development software. My library has
been using one called collectionHQ©, owned by Baker & Taylor. (B&T, as it is affectionately known, is
one of the biggest book distributors to libraries.)
collectionHQ© software allows libraries to run reports on
the items in their collection. You can
run weeding lists, grubby lists, dead lists and collection checklists (which is
basically a shelf list). Reports can be
specific to collections or departments and are separated by fiction,
non-fiction and non-book items (like music cds and flannelgraphs). The software can even tell you what
collections are overstocked and understocked.
Sounds like a great collection development tool, right?
As we found out at our library, collectionHQ© can be a great
tool as long you don’t totally rely on it.
It’s a starting place and the lists we ran helped us with our collection
development, but there are flaws to the system.
For more on that see this article https://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/sep20/index.shtml
. Don’t get me wrong, software can be a
great tool, but remember it isn’t your only tool. Your knowledge of your collection and
community is just as important.
So now we are making plans to go back to running reports
through our ILS. These reports can be
tailored a bit more to help us find more specific items for weeding. For instance, I plan to run a list for items
with older publication dates. Our ILS
report system can look for publication dates as well as dates we catalogued an
item. That can be helpful if we replaced
an older publication with a more recent copy.
Tools for collection development can be useful. I use them all the time, but they are not
without their flaws. No one tool can do
everything. It’s a constant learning
process. As I learn more about
publishers, software, authors, racial equality, and diversity I realize that I
must keep learning in order to do a good job with collection development. The more I know about the world of
books-tools, publishers, authors, etc. -- the better my knowledge base will be
to do what is best for my community.
What about you? What
is your favorite or most frustrating part
of collection development? Have
some favorite tools? Do you dread doing
weeding or buying? Do you use software
tools or ILS reports? I’d love to hear
what works for you!
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