Collection Management Cycle

 

Grose, Kelsey.

Lantzy, T., Matlin, T., & Opdahl, J. (2020). Creating a library-wide collection management cycle: One academic library’s approach to continuous collection assessment. Journal of Library Administration, 60(2), 155–166. https://doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2019.1677092

Summary: This article depicts a university library’s attempt to develop a holistic on-going collection management cycle to better aid its campus’ needs. Before this attempt, the library would conduct collection evaluations for specific purposes, which caused the evaluations to be inconsistent and some collections to age without updating. To prepare for this new endeavor, the library staff consulted literature reviews, surveys of similar institutions, and discussed their issues with stakeholders. The library decided to run a cycle every five years to cover all subject areas. This cycle covers inventory, data collection and analysis, stakeholder consultations, and weeding. They began the process by testing it on a few subject areas to make sure the processes would work on a grander scale. One challenge they faced was developing detailed data reports in a timely manner. However, they ultimately felt the benefits outweighed the challenges.

Evaluation: As a middle school librarian, implementing such a cycle would have a lot of benefits. It would ensure the maintaining of a collection that stays relevant to students’ and teachers’ needs, and the identifying of outdated, irrelevant, and underused materials on a regular basis. Additionally, being able to set up my budget over a five year period would help my principal see the direction we are moving in. However, considering a university library’s staff found it difficult to keep up with the timeliness of the plan, I don’t know how feasible it would be to do this with only myself and my media tech working on it. Another consideration, on the other hand, is that our smaller scale collection might not need such a formal and lengthy cycle.