Sittie Soraya L.

Ringia LIA 102 Vv

WRITTEN REPORT OF CHAPTER 2

2 From Selection to Collection Management

What is collection management?
Collection Management is an important library function and involves three major aspects:

 Budgeting for the collection.

 Developing policies for the creation.
 Developing strategies for building, weeding, and maintaining the collection.
Also, collection management incorporates the variety of functions involved in selecting, acquiring, storing, and
maintaining the collections in a cost= effective manner.
Collection management libraries are essentials as well in how the libraries function. They are responsible for
budgeting for the collection and developing policies for efficient collection. The design of a collection requires
a process of selecting, storing, and improving the resources of the library.
INFORMATION TRANSFER PROCESS
Types of organizations also have information management or transfer issues. Some of the terms used in these
environments are:

 Information resource management as used today, relates to any organizational context, often without
any centralized collection of materials, in which the information resource manager is responsible for
identifying and making available to appropriate staff members both internal and external sources of
information.
 Knowledge management, defined as the “management of objects that can be identified and handled in
information systems”. (Brogan, Hingston, and Wilson, 2002, p. 2).
 Content management, Martin White (2002) defined content management as software that “provides a
platform for managing the creation, review, filing, updating, distribution, and storage of structured and
unstructured content” (p. 20).
 Records management, the process of handling the working records of an organization with an
emphasis on retention, retrieval, and access issues.
Regardless of type, one of the primary purposes of libraries is to assist people in locating and accessing useful
information. Basic elements are the same regardless of organizational context.
o Identification stage
o Select
o Acquire
o Organizing
o Preparation
o Storage and access
o Interpretation
o Utilization
o Operation
Collection development defined as “the process of identifying the strengths and weaknesses of a library’s
materials collection in terms of patron needs and community resources, and attempting to correct existing
weaknesses, if any.” Our view is that the term collection management is broader in scope, and while retaining
the goals of meeting the information needs of the people (a service population) in a timely and economical
manner using library resources, it adds elements such as long-term preservation, legal aspects of user access
to materials, and collaborative efforts with others to provide the most cost-effective access as possible.
Collection management (CM)
 a universal process for libraries. Figure 2.2 illustrates the major components of the process. One can
see a relationship between Figures 2.1 and 2.2, in that CM involves three of the nine information
transfer elements (identification, selection, acquisition).
 CM is a constant cycle that continues as long as the library exists. All of the elements in the cycle are
discussed in subsequent chapters. Because of our philosophy of CM, which has a focus on meeting the
 information needs of the service community, we begin our discussion with the need assessment
element.
 The terms need assessment, community analysis, or user/service community, as used throughout this
text, mean the group of persons that the library exists to serve. They do not refer only to the active
users, but include everyone within the library’s defined service parameters.
 For CM personnel, the assessment process provides data on what information the clientele needs. It
also establishes a valuable mechanism for user input into the process of collection development. (Note
the size of the arrow in Figure 2.2 from the community to collection development; the size indicates
the level of “community” input appropriate for each element.)

COLLECTION MANAFEMENT PROCESS

One constant factor is that there is never enough money available to buy everything that might be of value to
the service community. Naturally, this means that someone, usually one or more professional staff members,
must decide which items to buy. It may involve deciding among items that provide information about the
same subject; deciding whether the information contained in an item is worth the price; deciding on a format
for the information; or determining whether an item could stand up to its projected use. In essence, it is a
matter of systematically determining quality and value. Most of the time it is not just a matter of identifying
appropriate materials, but of deciding among items that are essential, important, needed, marginal, nice, or
luxurious. Where to place any item in the sequence from essential to luxurious depends, of course, on the
individual selector’s point of view. Its placement on such a continuum is a matter of perception and is an area
where differing views regarding that placement can be problematic for the library
Acquisition work is the process of securing materials for the library’s collection, whether by purchase,
as gifts, or through exchange programs. This is the only point in the collection development process that
involves little or no community input; it is a fairly straightforward business operation. Often the individuals
who have selection duties are not directly involved in the work of acquiring the selected material.
Evaluating is the last element in the collection management process. Evaluation of a collection can
serve many different purposes, both inside and outside the library. For example, it may help to increase
funding for the library.
The withdrawal process has several labels, the oldest being weeding. Another term for this process is
deselection or deaccessioning. In the United Kingdom, the term used for the process is stock relegation.
Regardless of the label, the end result is the same; when a library decides to withdraw an item, it will dispose
of the item (by selling it, giving it away, or even discarding it).
Beyond the four core CM activities (covered in Chapters 3–6), there are a host of issues that impact those
activities in some manner. We have grouped those issues into six very broad categories (addressed in Chapters
7–12):
 Collaboration
 Formats
 Technology
 Preservation
 Legal
 Ethical/ intellectual freedom

Collection Management and Library Types

One important fact to understand about libraries is that there are very few standalone operations.
Libraries are almost always a component of a larger parent organization. That organization is also surrounded
by external events, pressures, expectations, values, and so on. Those external elements eventually become
factors for the library.
We should also mention three other “generic” aspects of CM. The size of a library’s service community has a
definite bearing on collection development. Three facts of collection development are universal:
1. As the size of the service community increases, the degree of divergence in individual information
needs increases.
2. As the degree of divergence in individual information needs increases, the need for resource sharing
increases.
 3. It will never be possible to satisfy all of the information needs of any individual or class of clientele in
the service community from locally held or leased resources.

Institutional Libraries

 Institutional libraries, as most people in the United States think of them today, came into existence in
the mid-19th century. (Certainly, there were libraries earlier in the United States; however, they had
little resemblance to today’s libraries.)
 The notion of purchasing books (in the early days it was just books, other formats came later) for the
academic library was not widespread until near the middle of the 19th century.
 By the mid-19th century, students began establishing local literary or debating societies off campus
and creating their own libraries with books, journals, and newspapers of interest to their members.
 It was only in the later 20th century that academic librarians began playing a major role in how campus
libraries created and maintained their collections.
Public Libraries

 Deciding when “public libraries” originated is very much a matter of definition and of course
debate. We know that some Greek and Roman communities had places where people might
read scrolls. For example, in some Roman public baths there were “dry rooms” filled with
scrolls that people could read. However, there is no indication that such rooms were
government supported but rather were a service that some baths offered.
 In 1731, Benjamin Franklin organized what he called a subscription (social) library (e.g.,
individuals had to pay a fee to have access). Franklin’s idea was that people would greatly
benefit from pooling their money and could purchase a greater quantity and variety of material
than they could on their own.
Four attributes of modern public libraries.
o One attribute that categorizes a public library is that it is supported by a government body—usually a
municipality or county with tax revenues.
o Another attribute is that the library is freely available to all residents within the taxing jurisdiction.
Many public libraries now have reciprocal agreements between neighboring community libraries that
allow registered borrowers access to all the collections of the collaborating libraries.
o A third attribute is that the collection is wide ranging in scope, catering to interests of the community
from children’s picture books to scholarly monographs.
o Our final attribute is that registered borrowers may check out a majority of the items in the collection
for a period of time.

 In the mid-1800s, both cities had a community library open to their citizens. Boston officially
established such a library in 1848; however, it did not open to the public until 1854. New York
City had a library open to the public in 1849; however, it was financially supported by a bequest
($400,000) from one person—John Jacob Astor.
 BPL allowed people to borrow items, while materials in the Astor Library were intended for
reference only.
 BPL claims to have opened the first children’s room in 1895 and was the first public library to
offer storytelling in 1902.
 Carnegie libraries,
Standards and Guidelines
This is as reasonable a place as any to briefly discuss guidelines and standards in terms of collection
management. There are a number of professional organizations, both within the field of librarianship and
beyond, that have guidelines or standards that may influence CM work.
Library organizations are not the only ones to have created standards that relate to libraries and their
collections. Perhaps the most important group of organizations are those that accredit educational institutions
or some component within such institutions. There are literally hundreds of such agencies whose scope of
interest may be national, regional, or state-wide in nature.
One very important group of agencies is the six regional accrediting agencies. These agencies look at
educational institutions (kindergarten through postsecondary) to essentially give a “stamp of approval” that
an institution is meeting established quality criteria. Going through the accreditation process is voluntary;
however, most institutions do so for two major reasons. The first reason is “accredited status” is very often
essential when seeking federal funds; lacking such status generally means there is no reason to even attempt
to request such funds. The second reason is, in the minds of the general public, being accredited means the
institution is of high quality, even if people have no idea of what criteria were employed to determine such
status.
Taking on Collection Management Responsibilities
What is it about CM that creates such concerns and stress, particularly for new practitioners? Broadly thinking,
there are fourteen areas that CM personnel must master. The list reflects our real-world experience in CM:

 Differentiating between the responsibilities of CM librarians from other interested parties (faculty,
parents, or governing boards, for example).
 Determining/assessing the service community’s information needs.
 Understanding local collection development policy issues.
 Knowing the locally used selection sources (reviews, publishers, etc.).
 Comprehending how the library balances its collections between print, other media, and digital
resources.
 Ascertaining how collection development fiscal issues and allocations are addressed.
 Gaining an awareness of the local acquisitions system(s), existing approval plans, and standing or
blanket order plans.
 Discerning and understanding local CM collaborative initiatives.
 Learning local standards for assessing the collections and CM in accreditation projects.
 Knowing local storage and deselection issues, concerns, and practices.
 Understanding how the library handles preservation issues.
 Participating in discussions regarding legal issues related to collection access and use.
 Investigating and understanding how the library handles intellectual freedom issues and any library
policies regarding ethical interaction with vendors.
 Developing skills to function as an effective liaison or advocate for the library and its collections.
The truth is that graduate library and information science courses are excellent at providing the basics of the
areas a graduate may find her- or himself working in; however, they cannot provide anything but a few
examples of how a library makes local adjustments in those basics. It is highly unlikely that any two or more
libraries are identical in all respects; if for no other reason than their external environments are different,
which in turn requires adjustments in practices.
Some libraries, recognizing the critical importance of CM, provide incoming librarians who will have some CM
responsibility with an in-depth orientation to local practices. Such orientation is very valuable for all new
individuals—recent graduate or longtime professional—as the local variations must be mastered before one’s
performance is as effective as possible.
Points to Keep in Mind

 Collection management should be geared primarily to identified needs rather than to abstract
standards of quality; however, an identified need can be a long-term need (more than five years into
the future), not just an immediate need.
 Collection management, to be effective, must be responsive to the total community’s needs, not just
to those of the current or the most active users.
 Collection management should be carried out with knowledge of and participation in cooperative
programs at the local, regional, state, national, and international levels.
 Collection management should consider all information formats for inclusion in the collection;
however, it is the content that matters more than the format.
 Collection management was, is, and always will be subjective, biased work. A periodic review of the
selector’s personal biases and their effects on the selection process is the best check against
developing
 A collection that reflects personal interests rather than customer interests. Selection policies in place
can help offset any personal biases that may arise (these will be further discussed in Chapter 4).
 Collection management is not learned entirely in the classroom or from reading. Only through
practice, taking risks, and learning from mistakes will a person become proficient in the process of
developing a collection.