"Juvenile collection in an academic library"

   Liebau-Nelsen, Catherine

Shipman, T., Schmidt, G., & Bannon, S. (2013). Juvenile collection in an academic library. In Holder, S. (Ed.), Library collection development for professional programs: Trends and best practices (209-228). Hershey, Pa.: Information Science Reference.

Juvenile collections in academic libraries have various purposes and are placed in different positions throughout the library. While some may have their own collection development policies, others will fall under the umbrella CDP of the academic library. Some may have children's access policies and other will not. Some will have their own sections in the library and others won't. The type of juvenile collection and how it is treated within the academic library depend on the library, the collection itself, and the needs that it meets for its patrons; each should be treated as an individual collection that should not be restricted by others like it (which is the main purpose of the chapter). While there are variations of all sorts among juvenile collections in academic libraries, there are some aspects that they mostly have in common: the purpose for these collections will probably be to support education learning or as a source of study for social sciences. One thing is for certain: juvenile collections have become increasingly more important because of the level of importance that western culture has placed upon literature. The chapter discusses the different factors (such as age and genre), different forms (such as print and audiobooks), and ways to find good resources for acquisition (such as awards and book lists).

This chapter was extremely interesting to me because I studied a children's and young adult collection this semester for all of the projects. There were many things that I recognized from the article that I learned throughout the semester while studying the collection, so it was (in a way) validating to realize how much I learned from a collection that is (in many ways) sub par. The chapter includes many lists that both help and hinder the reading experience; they were clearly written, but it was difficult not to skip to the next bullet point because of its form. Still, for as long as it was, the chapter was written in a way that made sense sequentially. Out of all of the readings from this semester, I found this the most relevant to my research and the most interesting in general.