Designing and Managing Library Collections

 Rodriguez, Ariana

Wong, M. A. (2018). Designing and managing library collections. In K. Haycock & M.-J. Romaniuk (Eds.), The portable MLIS: Insights from the experts (2nd ed., pp. 137–151). Libraries Unlimited. 

Summary: 

Melissa A. Wong's chapter in The Portable MLIS: Insights from the Experts discusses the designing and maintaining of library collection and the principles and practices that drive them.  This includes the selection and deselection of materials, the evaluation of materials, and maintenance.

Evaluation: 

This chapter is a smart, brief introduction to the world of collection management. Wong goes into depth about acquiring materials with purpose and with guidance from the organization's set of policies. Each item must be of value to the collection and isn't collected for collecting's sake. I appreciate the sentiment about consistent ongoing evaluation of materials, both physical and digital. Physical items require routine maintenance for wear including taping and covering. Digital materials over time are subject to digital decay and irrelevance. It makes me think of how the floppy disk is now a relic and printing out physical directions on MapQuest is a thing of the recent past. Digital materials and resources need to be carefully considered for acquisition as their cost per use could be more in the long run. It runs the risk of outdated or broken links. Digital materials also have the potential to reach more patrons that may not be able to physically access the library. Remote patrons must be taken into consideration. Wong's points on the deselection process opened my eyes to why weeding is essential to collection management. Nobody is removing books without good reason and sometimes that reason is that the information inside is no longer accurate or relevant to a subject. All in all, collection management is an ongoing process. 

Rightsizing the Academic Library Collection by Suzanne M. Ward

 

By Adame, Katelynn

  Ward, S. M. (2015). Rightsizing the academic library collection. ALA Editions, an imprint of the American Library Association.

Summary: 

Ward's Rightsizing the academic library collection provides a new take on the deselection/weeding process. Always a daunting task, the book proposes the solution of rightsizing for academic libraries. The book begins my evaluating some of the challenges faced by academic libraries, including collaborative efforts, instruction design, employee relation, online learning, enrollment consideration, data collection, diversity, and more. Ward points out that libraries, "need to prove not only that their services benefit the institutions students and faculty, but also that these services are an integral part of student and faculty success," (p. 3). Where collections are concerned, issues of space, quality, and usability are all considerations when advocating for the growth of the library and their collections. Collection curation and deselection criteria should constantly be evolving to meet the needs of students, however, predicting the needs can be difficult, leaving library staff trailing behind while students advance. Large, unruly collections can be difficult to maintain and use, posing potential risks to funding and accessibility of the library collection. Ward does cover some traditional methods of weeding, and while these values still have merit, they may not necessarily be the best solution for academic libraries. The concept of Rightsizing requires libraries to assess their collections and evaluate what a suitable collection may look like for their institution. Rightsizing implements a plan that clearly "state the project’s objectives, staffing assignments, available resources, importance and relationship to the library’s primary goals, expected time frame for a large retroactive effort, measures of success, and strategy for ongoing maintenance," (p. 49). Instead of an annual practice, rightsizing transform the practice of deselection into an ongoing practice that is integral to the lifecycle management of an overall collection. The goal is to ultimately utilize space as best as possible while providing a collection that is usable, accessible, and offers students multiple avenues of information access. 

Evaluation/Review: 

As someone who works in a library with an unruly collection, this was an invaluable resource. Weeding has been an ongoing issue for our institution. Our general collection is full of outdated and unused material. While we continue to get new materials, our old materials seem to never leave. This leaves our collection daunting and unusable for students. I believe Ward has posed some excellent solutions through Rightsizing. Her solution of creating a weeding plan and criteria to generate an ongoing process of weeding can be helpful for librarians who do not have the time or resources to complete the laborious task of weeding. Rightsizing offers a means of maintain a collection that is realistic, manageable, and suitable to your staffing and institutional needs. For individuals in academic libraries, balancing collection management alongside other duties as liaisons, instructors, committee members, and more can be daunting. Typically, the practice of weeding gets pushed aside, leaving a collection in less than ideal condition. Rightsizing might be an excellent solution for information professionals who are looking to manage an unruly collection. 

Crash Course in Collection Development, chapters 11-12: Collection Maintenance; Mending and Preserving

Riggs, Michelle

Disher, W. T. (2014). Crash course in collection development (2nd ed.). Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited. P. 86-106.

In Chapter 11, Collection Maintenance, Disher discusses the importance of reviewing our collections on a continual basis: patrons become overwhelmed when faced with stuffed shelves; there is no room for new materials, and research shows that weeding actually improves circulation. Disher addresses the common misconceptions many librarians hold about weeding, including concerns with taking time, making judgment calls, harming the collection, needing the materials later, disposing of something of value, and the general feeling that it is wrong to throw away books. He then provides recommendations for beginning the weeding process, including reviewing the collection development policy, collection analysis, and community analysis, and then making a plan, scheduling time, and monitoring progress. He reviews criteria for weeding, and the options of discard, reorder, mend, or enhance.

In Chapter 12, Mending and Preserving, Disher reviews common misconceptions that mending is cheaper or faster than replacing, and that old equals valuable. He explains the damage that can occur to a book’s binding, spine, and paper and whether it is worth mending. He then explores various sources of damage and how they may be prevented, including damage from light, tears/folds, photocopying, water, and food/drink. Finally, he provides a list of online resources for book repair and preservation.

I focused on these chapters because my library has an aged collection that needs attention, and it is often difficult to feel confident when making collection maintenance decisions. The information is easily understood and valuable to help justify decisions made about library materials. One thing that had not occurred to me is that the wall of windows located next to our picture book section is likely doing significant harm, and those blinds should be aimed upwards to direct the light off the books.

How to maintain and weed E-book collections

Samnath, Kayla

Culley, J. (2015). I Feel the Need to Weed!: Maintaining an E-book Collection. The Southeastern Librarian, 63(1), 2.

Summary:

Author Jennifer Culley is the acquisitions librarian at the university of southern Mississippi. She discusses in her text the need to “weed”, and why perhaps it shouldn’t be viewed as such a negative aspect. She also discusses electronic books, and how it is crucial to continuously evaluation and assess the collection, regardless of format. Culley explains “the idea of more is better does not always hold true” (2015, p. 02).

Culley offers readers a brief historical overview of electronic books. Interestingly enough, electronic books have been around since the 1970’s. Project Gutenberg, which is still going strong today, is one of the first platforms in which electronic books were offered. However, the technology to use these sources was expensive. It wasn’t until the rapid evaluation of technology through netLibrary internet based services, google books, and more recently tablets, kindles, laptops, and smartphones that electronic books really took off (2015, p.02).

Electronic books allow patrons to have access to information at any time. It does not matter if patrons are inside or outside the library. Culley explains that “...there are several avenues to obtaining ebooks for libraries: libraries can purchase them through subscription services where they can get large collections of materials by subject matter, they can order single titles or implement a demand driven e-book acquisitions program” (2015, p.03). Although libraries can obtain electronic books, there is still the matter of weeding, even for electronic materials.

Weeding these materials are necessary due to cluttered search results, old data, or simply wrong information. Culley explains that this outdated information can be harmful, and even stressful on students. Typically users will make a selection on the top results due to muddled results. This became apparent on searches for STEAM, technology, science, and mathematics (2015, p.03).  Culley makes the argument that similar criteria should be used on electronic books as the ones they use for print and other physical materials. A great example of criteria for these types of resources the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. Their system for weeding e-books is: “Misleading, and/or factually inaccurate; Ugly, not applicable for ebooks; Superseded, by a truly new edition or by a much better book on the subject; Trivial, of no discernible literary or scientific merit; Irrelevant, to the needs and interests of your communication; Elsewhere, the material can be obtained expeditiously somewhere else” (2015, p.04). Utilizing techniques such as these will allow electronic materials to become more meaningful, and also saving money by cancelling certain subscriptions.

Evaluation:

This article was helpful in understanding the concept of weeding, and the impact it can have on electronic books. It offers a really great history of electronic materials, and how libraries have really adapted to this format. The article was extremely useful when completing presentation four. Culley also gives insight from a librarian perspective. It was interesting how the article expressed that librarians are typically hesitant to weed because the thought of throwing away materials can be perceived as detrimental. Culley points out that how there are constantly new editions being published, in which sometimes makes the older versions obsolete. I really liked how Culley simply states that more isn’t always better, sometimes having more makes the information search frustrating, and muddled with useless results.

This article was extremely helpful when completing presentation four. For our proposed budget presentation understanding how to weed, and develop a criteria to assist in making those decisions. I would recommend this article for novices interested in collection development and management. It uses a great case study in order to assist in a deeper understanding of the concept of maintaining a collection, regardless if it is electronic or traditional formats.

In Favor of Weeding

Bishop, Andrew

Ferguson, C. (2015). In Favor of Weeding. Serials Review 41(4), 221-223. DOI: 10.1080/00987913.2015.1103573

An examination of the faculty and student objections to the storage of hard copy monographs and serials in favor of creating more study spaces during a library renovation at Colby College leads Ferguson into a contemplation of the future role of the library in campus life and what being a library will mean as technology and pedagogy advance, and what role weeding plays in the space allocation considerations of libraries going forward with a modernization of their physical space.  Colby College moved almost 40% of its monographic collection to off-campus storage to make room in the library for more learning commons type spaces in the facility.  Faculty objected to this move, arguing for the utility of browsing and serendipity, which are more difficult using electronic discovery resources, in research.  Ferguson argues that while these are valid concerns, “…ultimately, at the heart of most objections raised against weeding and storage initiatives in libraries is a debate on the role of the library itself” (221).  These questions and determinations often come from users, Ferguson cites MIT’s recent survey revealing students wanted study spaces and a café in the renovated library, rather than from the library apparatus itself.  Ferguson also points out the financial cost of a hard copy collection, saying a recent estimate in Library Journal put the cost of storage at over $11 per book, although renovating an existing space into a learning commons can run as high as $457 per square foot.  Preserving space for other uses becomes a higher priority than maintaining a certain collection size, which makes whether an item is worth the space it takes up the number one weeding criterion.  Ferguson makes several best practices recommendations, such as including the community in the decision-making process to both reduce user anxiety over library changes and ensure that the changes truly serve patron wants and needs, transparency of the reasoning behind the weeding criteria and the need for a weeding project, ensuring responsible disposal of weeded materials, and making weeding a regularly undertaken part of the collection development process instead of waiting until it is urgently needed and removing a giant chunk of the collection at once.

Evaluation

I agree with Ferguson’s best practice recommendations, even though they are largely geared toward alleviating patron anxiety over weeding rather than with the process of weeding itself.  Particularly valuable is her suggestion that weeding be an ongoing process rather than an occasional large project.  Not only are patrons reassured by regularity, it’s a lighter burden on the library staff to have something they can incorporate into their routines instead of a big thing they have to drop everything else for.  My main issue with this paper, and it is not necessarily with the paper itself but with the larger issue, is the assumption that study spaces and the like fall under the libraries’ mission and ought to be a part of them.  Is the campus community truly best served by bolting these areas onto the existing library instead of having an exclusive, purpose-built space?  Or is it that library renovations present the first, or only, opportunity for the community to request these paces be created on campus?  I know when I worked in an academic library (very recently), students using the study spaces did not simultaneously use other library resources, such as going out into the stacks or interacting with the reference librarians.  Although they may have been accessing electronic resources such as databases during their group study time, this could just have easily been done anywhere on campus.  Asking such questions falls outside Ferguson’s purpose with this article, though, and I think she gives a brief but thorough argument for weeding as part of not only collection management but management of the library’s physical space.

LGBTQ Collection Assessment: Library Ownership of Resources Cited by Master's Students

Harkleroad, Tiffany

Graziano, V. (2016). LGBTQ Collection Assessment: Library Ownership of Resources Cited by Master's Students. College & Research Libraries, 77(1), 114-127. doi:10.5860/crl.77.1.114

After the Stonewall riots in 1969, gay and lesbian studies, either in the form of individual courses or in the form of entire departments, began to emerge in academic institutions.  LGBTQ studies continue to expand in higher education, and as a result, academic libraries are assessing the needs of their institutions in the context of developing LGBTQ collections.  This study examples the bibliographic citations (3,243 in total) of 28 graduate theses with a focus on LGBTQ studies, written by students at Concordia University between 1991 and 2013.  The goals are to assess the strengths of the university’s current LGBTQ collection, to identify LGBTQ collection materials that the university is lacking, and to assess overall LGBTQ collection needs.  The study determined that the library owned 73% of the citations studied; this is below the average number of citation in similar citation studies on different topic areas.  By breaking down the types of materials cited, it was determined that the collection was weak in terms of LGBTQ popular periodicals; however, the more recent theses tended to cite this particular type of material less often.  The study determined that the LGBTQ collection at Concordia was well developed, particularly given the fact that there is no LGBTQ studies department at the school at the time of this study.

As a student who is particularly interested in LGBTQ studies as relates to library science, I found this article to be quite interesting.  For academic libraries, it is important that the libraries contain the correct types of materials and topic matter to meet the needs of students.  As academic studies expand to include more social concepts and topics, collections will need to adapt to meet those needs.  This particular study shows that the library in question has taken a fairly progressive stance, by containing many of the materials used in the completion of the theses studied.  I found the discussion of convenience bias most interesting, meaning students are more likely to use materials readily available in the library, and that might have some bearing on results in studies such as these.

The Art of Weeding

von Mayrhauser, Heidi

Chant, I.  (2015).  The art of weeding.  Library Journal, 140(11), 34-37.

Notes Summary: Weed gradually instead of all at once, as this makes the process easier and will prevent tension.  If the public or staff sees high numbers of books being thrown out, controversy can arise.  In addition to weeding slowly, communication and transparency about weeding policies can help.  Inviting patrons on tours and showing how the library is maintained can help.  You can keep outdated materials as examples to illustrate the need for weeding.  The article recommends weeding first by numbers and reports, then having a librarian check the report to look for classics, local authors/interests, books by authors about the release a new title, and last copies in the system.  Weed for age when the book needs to contain relevant information.  An example from the article, "Jennifer LaGarde, educator on loan for the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction and a 2012 LJ Mover & Shaker, recalls a title she came across while thinning out a reference section during her first year as a school librarian.  The book stated confidently that "scientists do not believe HIV is transmitted through sexual content."  Alternatives for the dumpster are sending the books to a book sale and using them to create arts and crafts.

Evaluation:  This article was helpful for me, as I have not done a great deal of weeding.  I can relate to the public's distress over seeing dumpsters full of books, so I appreciated that the article addresses this and provides recommendations for preventing tension.  Weeding slowly and being transparent and open about what is going on should help to inform and educate concerned citizens.