Monday, October 31, 2016

The value of money in collection development



Tracy, Anna
INFO 266, Fall 2016

Maintaining a model that accurately reflects user demands and taste is what is covered in this article as well as how to create benchmarks for both replacement and value for the money in purchasing and measure success.

You can establish a baseline using the following data:

“Number of acquisitions per year, represented as a
Stock budget per year, represented as b
Number of loans, represented as I
Load period in weeks, represented as p

Average cost of an item: c=b/a”

This article goes on to describe other formulas of measuring value for the money when it comes to collection development in public libraries.

Budgeting according to what is wanted, novel idea? Or apparently it was several years back as the demand increased from local government agencies to justify their investment in libraries. This required many libraries to adjust policies for selection in order to reflect the collection development processes geared towards user demands. I can’t imagine doing it any other way, but I am new, and I have a teeny tiny budget, so really this method is the only way to keep things flowing and everyone happy.



Stanton, J. (2001). MEASURING VALUE FOR MONEY IN PUBLIC LIBRARY COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT. Aplis, 14(2), 58. 

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