Collaborative Collection Development for Specialized Collections

Dailey, Kaitlin

Carr, M. (2013). Crowdsourcing content to promote community and collection development in public libraries. Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship 25(4), 313-316. 
DOI: 10.1080/1941126X.2013.847690 

Summary:
This article focuses on how important it is to reach out to community members in order to bring their own works into a collection. Specifically, this article focuses on chapbooks from poets which represent a difficult collection to work with for librarians because there is a constant tug between what is wanted and the quality. The idea is that by encouraging community members to voluntarily deposit their works into the library so patrons can get what they want and the collection can remain relevant to today's users.

Evaluation:
I rather enjoyed this article a lot because I think it is very important to include community members when selecting content for a collection. I noticed that with my library as well as other public libraries that there is a huge focus on the user initiating the process for collection development. Some libraries do have internal lists that they pull from, but they predominantly focus on the patrons for their development which does not always work. But, by utilizing a information community and creating a space for collaboration, Carr is demonstrating that development can occur at a local level for the collection that is still relevant and what is desired. I would have liked to have seen a broader study, but based on the scope it would have been problematic to focus on a larger collection.

Poets as Librarians: Marrying the worlds of writing and librarianship

Smith, Sean

SS

http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2014/librarian-as-poet-poet-as-librarian/

This article discusses the relationships between poets as librarians and building a sustainable poetry collection. The author discusses the duality of the writing and library communities and how she balances both.

As a writer and librarian, I found this article to be helpful and insightful. Like the author of this article, I typically keep my writing life separate from my work life, which happens to be in a public library. The thought of bringing in poets to read to the library has crossed my mind but to be honest, I don’t believe that the patrons of our library would be very receptive to this. Our patrons are more interested in local history, and culture in our city isn’t really a priority among citizens.

An interesting quote at the conclusion of the article: “It is my hope that the networks between poet librarians will grow, helping us to collaborate while supporting each other through the (equally stressful?) process of writing and librarianship.”

Tags: poets, poetry, librarians, writers, writing

Sean Smith, Spring 2016, INFO 266