New Horizons for Academic Library Collection Development: Creating a Community-Curated Collection Through Student Empowerment

 

MacRae, Alisdair

Heisserer-Miller, R., & McAlister, L. R. (2023). New horizons for academic library collection development: Creating a community curated collection through student empowerment. Journal of Library Outreach & Engagement, 3, 119–135. https://doi.org/10.21900/j.jloe.v3.1157

Summary

This article offered two interesting solutions for academic libraries to engage student, faculty, and staff users in the form of student selection projects and grants awarded for purchasing materials related to their given area of focus. Responding to declining enrollment, shrinking budgets, and the needs of marginalized users, these programs enhanced services for users while also maintaining collection development. The Kent Library at Southeast Missouri State University is not large, with five staff for every 1,000 students, and consisting of twelve librarians and eight staff. The library had operated under a collection development model driven by faculty, so librarians had very little involvement. Equating student engagement with student success, the decision was made to establish opportunities to participate in collection development. The students gladly accepted the invitation, and while faculty might not necessarily approve materials selected by students in some cases, the solutions showed how vital student participation is for academic libraries, as well as the increasing opportunities for diversity equity, inclusion, social justice, outreach, and partnerships.

Evaluation

I found this article really exciting in terms of academic library collection development. While the university at the centre of the project might seem small and perhaps not well funded, I believe these solutions could be applied at institutions of any size, and even in non-academic library settings. The literature review supported the idea of student success through engagement, but also the potential pitfalls due to inconsistent and complex methods used to engage students, and how the student collection development process was eventually selected. The authors provided data and analysis around the engagement with each opportunity for collaborative collection development. While they noted the limits of the programs due to COVID ,they were also very honest about how interest may have been bolstered through signage, posters, free candy and coffee shop gift cards, and promotional writings in the student newspaper. Promotion may be seen as critical to making the collection development projects successful rather than imparting bias given how students are busy, and may have been under the impression that they may have little input into library operations. Overall, the project did not have exorbitant costs, with $4,000 devoted to the purchase of student nominated resources between 2019 and 2020, and $7,000 for the student group grant program between 2019 and 2021. I believe the article offers a good example of connection development through its collaborative aspects, and it would be interesting to try a similar project at another library.