Building and Managing E-book Collections: A How-To-Do-It Manual For Librarians by Richard Kaplan

DiBello, Amy 

Kaplan, R. (2012). Building and managing e-book collections: A how-to-do-it manual for librarians (A How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians). Chicago, Ill.: Neal-Schuman.

This one goes out to all the library paraprofessionals who felt like they were thrown into the deep end of helping library patrons with their eReaders. Until this class, I didn't give much thought to the history of eBooks or how to build or manage an eBook collection. However, Richard Kaplan's book Building and Managing E-Book Collections: A How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians (which is part of our additional recommended reading) is a real treat. 

I had no idea about the complexities of digital license agreements, purchasing options, and how to coordinate print and digital titles while abiding by a budget. As a library patron, I enjoy books returning themselves and being able to download and read whatever I want from the comfort of my home. But the flip side for librarians is keeping up with high maintenance conditions of user agreements, selecting the best ebook platform, and negotiating with publishers.

This books addresses various scenarios about maintaining digital collections and staying in touch with patron wishes. Kaplan includes the experiences of librarians working in academic, public, and medical librarians to show why they made specific choices to sacrifice shelving spaces, participate in pilot programs, and lend out devices to patrons.

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.