"Let's Do It!' - A New Approach to Collection Development

Anna Fenerty

Citation

Loertscher, D. V., & Koechlin, C. (2016). Collection Development and Collaborative Connection Development: Or, Curation2. Teacher Librarian, 43(4), 52–53.

Summary

The authors, Loertscher and Koechlin, discuss the progress of implementing Learning Commons in the school libraries and offer a list of tools and templates to help the librarians make the transitions. In 2015, the authors conducted a survey of 900 teacher librarians, which showed some progress in connection developments since most schools were shifting from exclusively traditional book and database collections by adding online resources. On the other hand, shifting from one-way library websites to participatory virtual spaces was still in the very beginning stages in most of the schools surveyed. The authors suggest approaching collection development with a new attitude; WE, librarians, teachers, and students have a collective responsibility “to curate the very best educational resources” together. All need to pitch in at the building, district, state, and national level to develop connections to community resources and OERs that benefit everyone involved.

Evaluation

A relevant and inspiring article that shows the current state of digital collections and trends in school libraries. The authors offer “hands-on” advice, tools, and templates to help school librarians transition into a leadership role to “mentor collaborative curation” of connections and participatory resources instead of building collections of “owned” resources that are constricted by individual and finicky budgets. Everyone can benefit from connected participatory collections. So, “Let’s do it!”

Content Curation and the School Librarian

Jessica Brooks

Robertson, N.D. (2012)  Content curation and the school librarian.  Knowledge Quest: Personal Learning Networks--Online Exclusive.  Accessed 5/14/18.   http://www.ala.org/aasl/sites/ala.org.aasl/files/content/aaslpubsandjournals/knowledgequest/docs/KQNovDec12_OE_TAGS.pdf

This article stresses the importance of using your PLN, or Professional/Personalized Learning Network as a resource when collecting and curating digital resources for the library.  The author also focuses on students as curators, and having students create their own PLN's and curate resources for assignments together.  The author uses Pinterest, Symbaloo, and Storify as example web tools for curation.

Though this article is a little out of date (2012) and Storify is no longer active, the author's ideas are useful and relevant.  I appreciate the idea of having students work with social bookmarking sites like symbaloo to create their own digital resource board.

What is curation? An interesting video...

 I really enjoyed this video, which introduces the idea of curation as a part of collection development and management. We are living in a data driven world, and librarians are in the unique position of gathering and arranging information for consumers. As the narrator says, "It is the curator's job to bridge the gap between the material they're presenting and the people they are presenting it to" (location 2:18). The narrator works largely in the art world, in which she reviews, gathers, selects, and presents works of art and the information pertaining to it--and these are the same words we use in collection development and acquisitions. She mentions the various steps and facets of curatorship and describes it as a timelined process, which repeats and often takes a circuitous route from the initial search and review to the final presentation to the public. While the terms curator and curation are in wider use these days (as anyone can "curate," and this is no more evident than in places like Pandora and GoodReads), the narrator provides us with a solid grasp of the traditional use of the terms and how they apply to today's digital world.

Although this video speaks in terms of the art world, libraries often deal in physical items as well as written works, and this is especially true as the world of librarianship opens up to diverse collections and industries. For example, there was recently a job announcement for a librarian at Pixar Studios, in which the librarian would be in charge of managing the collection of animation cells, prototypes, and digital animation resources. A movie lover's dream job! And like so many librarian jobs that come up, it is not a traditional book collection, yet still needs the professional knowledge of a librarian. This is what we are looking at in terms of the future of our career field--and watching this video is a great way to get these ideas defined and understand just how we'll likely be working now and in the future.