LIBRARY COLLECTION

". . . the fundamental function of a library: the acquisition, preservation, and dissemination of materials and information in all their forms to help educate, enrich, entertain, and inform." (Chernik 1)

"The goal of any collection development organization must be to provide the library with a collection that meets the appropriate needs of its client population within the limits of its fiscal and personnel resources." (Bryant 1987)

There's the rub. More than 60,000 magazines are published, approximately 50,000 books are published each year. No library has the resources to subscribe or buy everything. How can we assure that our collection will meet our patrons' needs most of the time?

What must you consider when acquiring materials for a library? Let's begin by considering your own personal library. What is in your collection of materials in your home? Do you have magazines, journals, newspapers, books, videos, CD's CD ROMS, records, cassettes, or other materials. What are their titles? What information do they contain? Do you have puffy books, bath-tub books, pop-up books? Why? Why not? Do you have cook books, romances, travel guides, biographies, mysteries, classics, Bibles, how to books? Why? Why not?

Just as your collection of materials meets your needs and interests, all library's collections should reflect the needs of the users. The users will depend on the library type. A grade school library collection will be different than a public library collection. The first task in building a library collection is to know your patrons.

A public library must consider demographic information such as age, ethnicity, language, and sex of their patrons as well as economic, education, and locale of their library. In addition each public library must determine what roles they should fulfill for their community. These roles include: a community activities center; community information center; formal education support center; independent learning center; popular materials library; preschoolers' door to learning; reference library; and research center. Nation wide 88% of public library users feel a formal education center is a very important role, 85% said the independent learning center function of the library is important, and 83% said the preschoolers door to learning is very important. (Whole Library Handbook 25)

School and academic libraries match their collection to the curriculum and special libraries collect materials that reflect their parent institutions objectives.

As you can see, libraries build their collection around their patrons needs and the objectives they have defined for themselves. This information should be clearly stated in the Materials Collection Policy along with the mission of the library.

What are important elements to consider in purchasing materials?

Community needs; quality of publishing; balanced collection; good reviews; patron requests; currency; circulation; reputable author and publisher; price, gaps in collection, reading level; fill in gaps as new subject or area of knowledge expands; anticipated needs; current events; local information; and local authors.

How can one become a good collector?

Knowledge of your collection; involvement with the community you serve; circulation statistics; professional reading; objectivity (know your own biases); networking with specialists in the field; read broadly; listen to radio and TV; remember needs of non-users; listen to patrons; visit books stores; look at collections of other libraries; publishers catalogs; best-sellers lists; read reviews; knowledge of publishers; attend book selection conferences and book fairs.

Internet Sites that can help in Collection Development

Look at other library's acquisition policies:

Collection Development also requires that you maintain the collection that you have. It requires involvement with preservation and bindery services.

Go to the Dartmouth site to find a manual for simple repairs.

Donations and gifts are generally the responsibility of the acquisitions department. Each good Materials Collection Policy should provide guidelines for the procedures a library will follow when receiving donations.

Check out the University of Florida's program.

Vendors and jobbers are of great service in collection development. Jobbers and vendors buy merchandise such as books or magazines from publishers and sell them to libraries. There are many advantages of using a vendor in materials collection. Instead of having to deal with hundreds of individual publishers with hundreds of invoices, envelopes, and stamps, it is possible to deal with one or two vendors to satisfy your collection needs.

Because vendors are dealing in bulk they can provide a price advantage. Vendors also provide other services such as on-line ordering, statistics of purchases and more. In addition, vendors have become advocates for the library world and help to support many conferences.

Visit two vendors' sites.

General publishers, bookstores are still important to libraries although much purchasing may be done through a vendor.

How do you know which titles to purchase. As we said earlier, reading reviews is an important task in selecting materials. There are many periodicals which contain book reviews.  There are also some sites on-line that can assist in determining which of the thousands of books and other materials to buy.

Books that have been recognized for their quality by receiving a book award may be located at Bookwire.

What do you do with a book that has been challenged and someone would like to have a book that you have collected removed from your library collection?

Read about book banning (you have a Web Board discussion question to respond to on this topic): 

See also:
International Historical Overview of Censorship & Comprehensive Survey of Censorship and Book Banning

References

Bryant, Bonita. "The Organizational Structure of Collection Development." Library Resources & Technical Services 31 (1987):      111-122.

Chernik, Barbara E.  Introduction to Library Services. Englewood, Colorado: Libraries Unlimited, Inc., 1992.

Eberhart, George M. The Whole Library Handbook. Chicago: American Library Association, 1995.

Stewart, Barbara.  Directory of Library Technical Services Home Pages. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc., 1997.

Thomsen, Elizabeth. Reference and Collection Development on the Internet. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc., 1996.

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Carolyn Funes cfunes@palomar.edu