collection management issues
what to collect?
Lisa Ward, from the Eva Perry Branch of the Wake County Public Library, raised this topic in a 2008 seminar and I felt that her way of describing the issue and addressing its facets was so useful that I have incorporated it here. When one considers the collections we have on our shelves, we have to consider some issues. Public libraries have a huge variety of users, but a limited amount of money to use to acquire materials to satisfy those users' desires. The materials in our libraries are there to be used and thus might need to conform more to the reading desires of the patrons than to an idealized vision of what a library might possess. But how do we decide what to devote our limited resources to and how do we decide how many individual items to keep, or how many copies of individual items that we will keep?
Different systems have taken different tacks on the topic, but many seem to have veered more toward the idea that the public library's collection is to be a reflection of popular taste and less a reflection of what might be called the "literary canon," or the "greatest works of artistic merit". A recent example of such a decision was seen in Fairfax County, Virginia last year. In an article by Lisa Rein in the Washington Post entitled Hello, Grisham -- So Long, Hemingway? With Shelf Space Prized, Fairfax Libraries Cull Collections. The division and the challenge was expressed in a telling commentary.
There are no national standards on weeding public library
collections.
As Fairfax bets its future on a retail model,
some librarians say that the public library may be straying too far
from its traditional role as an archive of literature and history.
Arlington County's library director, Diane Kresh, said she's "paying
a lot of attention to what our customers want." But if they aren't
checking out Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," she's not only keeping
it, she's promoting it through a new program that gives forgotten
classics prominent display.
"Part of my philosophy is that you collect for the ages," Kresh
said. "The library has a responsibility to provide a core collection
for the cultural education of its community." She comes to this view
from a career at the Library of Congress, where she was chief of
public service collections for 30 years.
The weight of the new choices falls on the local librarian. (my emphasis)
Not everyone agrees with the decision, as evidenced by some of the responses to the article, but the weight of the decision still resides with the library and the staff.
The same question was posed in regards to the Cameron Village Branch in Raleigh. G.D. Gearino of the News & Observer seemed a bit nostalgic for a different kind of library when he noted ...
Despite its glories, the library is -- how do I say this politely?
-- a reflection of popular tastes. As library supervisor Dale
Cousins points out, patrons ask for children's books and audiobooks.
They like mysteries and thrillers. So they get those things ...
I know, I know. I'm just a half-step away from old-codger status.
Next thing you know I'll be ranting about how the phrase "happy
holidays" will destroy western civilization.
He didn't say it, but the fact is the same - the librarian has to make the call about what to collect and offer.
So, as you think about the topic, consider these questions:
- What is most important to public library users: bestsellers? retrospective titles? more titles? more copies of the same title?
- How important is it to analyze public library collections compared to the need to provide services and programming?
- What factors in collection development are unique to public libraries?
- How much collection development can or should be done in a centralized environment vs. at the local level?
how to display it?
You have thought about the bookstore model in terms of services and marketing, but have you considered it in terms of how is offers its wares to the public? After a library has determined that maybe it needs to collect more popular materials and less "classical" materials, can an argument be made for breaking away from classical models of how to offer the collection to the users?
First, a confession. As an undergrad, lo' these many years ago, I never paid attention to how books were arranged on the shelves. I didn't browse in the university libraries; I looked up a book in the card catalog, went to find it, and took it away for use. When I arrived in grad school some ten years after finishing my undergrad years, I was surprised to find the books in the library were arranged in Library of Congress style, rather than the Dewey Decimal style I remembered from my youth days. It didn't take too much time to get used to it, though.
Decades later in the cataloging class in library school, I learned about DDC and LoC. I loved the logic of DDC (no doubt because it appealed to my near-dead-descendant-of-white-European-males sensibility), but appreciated the flexibility of LoC. However, the way things are arranged doesn't bother me; once I can grasp the order, I can browse to my heart's content, in any library.
The same is sort of true for bookstores. Once one figures out the "order" they use, one can find things. Of course, that's easier done with fiction because genres seem easier to group than non-fiction (does one file Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel Escher Bach under computer science or philosophy or metamathematics?).
But in a public library, especially if one perceives it as in competition with the bookstore, could one argue that Dewey's time has come and gone?
So, if you choose to think about the topic, consider these questions:
- What do you think about separating out fiction genres? Do you even think that "genre" represents a valid or useful concept? What are some drawbacks and benefits of organizing a fiction collection around genre?
- How about removing Dewey call numbers from nonfiction, in favor of subject-shelving? Is there some moderate ground between ditching Dewey and maintaining a puritan defense of old Melvil Dui?
- Is changing the way library's shelve books a band-aid or does it address the root of the problem? What, in fact, is the root problem?
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