Wood and Hoffmann II
19 Dec 06
Wood and Hoffmann identify five steps that should be considered before implementing a collection policy:
- Surveying user groups
- Reviewing the goals and objectives of the institution of which the library is a part
- Determining the environmental characteristics likely to have an impact on the library collection
- Compiling specifications for the development of the library collection
- Determining current selection requirements
Historically, librarianship (or library science) has been about codifying existing practices. Collections existed long before collection development policies. In part, it seems to me Wood and Hoffmann’s list of considerations is symptomatic of this tendency. Partially, it’s indicative of the reality that any library exists in an already established context. To develop policy for an existing library, one can’t simply start from scratch and imagine the result to be a pure, intellectual, systematic construct. Instead, you have to work with the messy reality of what’s already there. At the same time, it hardly seems worthwhile simply to describe what goes on day-to-day and call it a policy. The target, I think, lies somewhere in between.
The remainder of W&H’s second chapter (Implementing a Policy) discusses a fair amount of advice from various sources, but it boils down to a few salient themes:
- Who will use the policy, and for what purposes?
- How will the policy be accessed, and by whom?
- How will the policy be updated, by whom, and how easily?
The key question, I would argue, is to what extent the policy document serves two central functions: providing direction to staff involved in collection development, and informing the library’s “stakeholders” as to its collection development intentions. (I hate the term stakeholders, but can’t think of a better one.) Stakeholders can be divided into a few main groups: patrons, funding sources, vendors, and staff. It might also be worth considering the extent to which the two central functions might be antithetical.
In my first post on Wood and Hoffmann, I identified four general categories of arguments in favour of libraries having collection development policies: planning, accountability, staff, and information. Partially, what I’m thinking about now is not so much a reduction of those categories to two, but a recognition that specific aspects of a policy may be either internally or externally oriented. Indeed, a policy could be entirely oriented in one or the other direction. My gut feeling is that collection development policies often try to do too much. Does a library benefit from having a comprehensive policy, or is it better to sketch a general framework that outlines the library’s general philosophy?
Posted by pzed on December 19, 2006 at 4.11pm
Johnson, Fundamentals
19 Dec 06
Johnson, Peggy. Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management. Chicago: ALA, 2004.
This would be a great text book for a first collection development course. After five years of doing the job, and at a time when I’m trying to work specifically on a collection development policy document, it might seem a step backwards to read an introductory text, but Johnson’s got some interesting ideas. I’ve only slogged through the first chapter, on the history of selection and its evolution into collection development/management; of course, it’s entirely American in focus, but it is an ALA publication, and hey, I live south of the border. It’s interesting to note that the “landmark event recognizing collection development as a new specialization in librarianship” (14) occurred in 1977. What on earth did libraries do before that?
I’m more interested in the future, really, but to answer my somewhat facetious rhetorical question (and to oversimplify a little), collection development as a specialty came out of selection and acquisition processes that could no longer cope with the size of the information universe. Acquisitions is normally clustered within the broad category of “technical services”: back-room stuff like cataloguing, preservation, invoicing, and so on. As a result, in many libraries collection development is often included on the technical service side. However, there is an obvious public service element to collection development as well, especially in an academic setting where liaison with faculty and students is an expectation of the job. Other “public services” are things like reference, information literacy, and circulation. In my library, collections is considered a public service, and since July 1, 2006, has been part of the same department as reference and information literacy. That’s why I’m interested when Johnson says something like this:
The opening of library catalogs to remote users, along with access to an endless variety and number of files outside library collections and their catalogs, creates a role for librarians as information guides or mediators. Librarians must be prepared and willing to guide users to files, no matter where they are stored, and ready to advise on retrieving them. Librarians have a mission to provide access to information and sources that have been inaccessible and unknown. (22)
I think she’s thinking, here, of various efforts to “tame” the internet: LII or BUBL, for example. Sites like these are great, but there’s limited space for them. Other ideas, like loading up library catalogues with web links, don’t really get it either. And in my experience (again, as an academic librarian) the majority of the electronic resources used by my patrons are behind a subscription wall, and we pay a great deal of money to get them access. So I see other implications for collections librarians, although I’m not sure I’m ready to articulate them. Johnson goes on to say:
Librarians must be sensitive to specialization and to cross-disciplinary initiatives. They need to learn new vocabularies and to become comfortable providing services to a variety of users. Librarians must move toward collaboration across disciplinary divisions within the library and recognize that more and more resources become relevant. (22)
This is a potentially exciting idea, but I think I initially wanted her to be referring to cross-disciplinarity within library areas of specialization, such as (hmm, just randomly) collections, reference, and information literacy. On second reading, I think she’s referring more to interdisciplinarity in academic disciplines, but I think the logic of interdisciplinarity applies within libraries as well.
Posted by pzed on December 19, 2006 at 10.19am
Wood and Hoffmann, Library Collection Development Policies
14 Dec 06
Wood, Richard J. and Frank Hoffman. Library Collection Development Policies: A Reference and Writers’ Handbook. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 1996.
Chapter 1 consists mainly of bullet points drawn from various authors describing the advantages libraries obtain by writing collection development policies. This lengthy summary combines all W&H’s sources. I would place them in four general categories:
Planning
- forces thinking about organizational goals to be met by the collection
- forces staff to think through library goals, commit to these goals. . .
- establishes priorites for collection development
- helps assure continuity
- helps ensure a degree of consistency over time and despite staff turnover
- provides information to assist in budget allocations
- aids in rationalizing budget allocations
- provides information for determining library-wide collection management policies
- aids in weeding and evaluating the collection
Accountability
- helps assure the library will commit itself to serving all parts of the community
- provides outsiders with information about the purpose of collection development (an accountability tool)
- provides a means of assessing overall performance of the CD program
- helps demonstrate that the library is running a business-like operation
- sets standards for inclusion and exclusion
- helps set quality standards for selection and weeding
- serves as a tool of complaint-handling with regard to selections or deselections
- reduces the influence of a single selector
- helps minimize personal bias by selectors
Staff
- educates librarians responsible for collections
- contributes to operational efficiency in terms of routine decisions
- provides a means of staff evaluation
- serves as a good in-service training tool
- guides staff in handling complaints
- helps spare staff from unwarranted criticism
- generates some degree of commitment to meeting organizational goals
- assists in establishing staffing needs and priorities
Information
- informs users, administrators, governing bodies, and other libraries of the collection’s scope and nature
- informs everyone about the nature and scope of the collection
- informs everyone of collecting priorities
- provides a public relations document
- describes collections strengths and weaknesses. . . and supports grant proposals, funding requests, and accreditation surveys
- communicates between libraries for purposes of developing and maintaining cooperative collection building and resource sharing
If this is the best we can do, I find myself sympathizing with Richard Snow. Some of these points I find potentially useful, some not. A few border on absurd. In general, I’m bothered (but not surprised) by dreary bureaucratic “vision” that seems to dominate policy development. So many collection policy documents are barely readable! Is this because it’s considered advantageous to appear businesslike?
But what worries me more is the almost total irrelevance of patrons to this process. Collection development policies inform them about our collections? Seriously, who ever reads a library’s collection development policy before they go looking for a book? What LIBRARIAN ever looks at other libraries’ collections policies, except when called upon to write their own. They tend to be dull, jargon-laden, and if the conspectus format is used, pretty much incomprehensible. More importantly, apart from providing information, what does a collection policy do for our patrons? Admittedly, it won’t provide direct benefit for most. Still, I’d like to see the profession articulating at least some of our reasons for policy development from a more user-centred perspective.
I not too long ago read a fascinating article by Hur-Li Lee entitled, “The Concept of Collection from the User’s Perspective.” It’s quite thought provoking, and more needs to be done in this area. Here’s the opening sentence: “In library and information science (LIS), the concept of collection has no rigorous definition and represents many different entities that are often seen from a library management perspective rather than from the perspective of users” (67).
Works Cited
Lee, Hur-Li. “The Concept of Collection from the User’s Perspective.” Library Quarterly 75.1 (2005): 67-85.
Wood and Hoffmann’s bullet point lists are drawn from—
Evans, G. Edward. Developing Library and Information Center Collections. 2nd ed. Littleton, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1987.
Farrell, David. “Policy and Planning.” Collection Management: A New Treatise. Eds. Charles B. Osburn and Ross Atkinson. Greenwich, CT: JAI, 1991.
Gardner, Richard K. Library Collections: Their Origin, Selection and Development. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981.
Posted by pzed on December 14, 2006 at 11.57am
Snow, Wasted Words
13 Dec 06
Snow, Richard. “Wasted Words: The Written Collection Development Policy and the Academic Library.” Journal of Academic Librarianship 22.3, 1996.
Snow cites various studies showing low rates of compliance with the received wisdom that CD policies are essential. A 1977 survey of 69 ARL libraries showed only 20 had a policy. In 1988 only one of five academic or research libraries in Alabama studied had a written policy, “with pleas of poverty, lack of time and overwork offered as excuses” (191). Another 1988 study of small to midsized libraries showed 58% had written policies.
“One possible explanation for the absence of universal acceptance of the written policy, despite its near unanimous endorsement in librarianship’s literature, is the lack of precise definition of what a written policy is as opposed to what it does.” (191)
This speaks to a couple of my concerns. I tend to find written collection policies bloated and unwieldy. The challenge, or perhaps the trade-off, is in trying to make the thing relatively short and still useful. What, then, is the usefulness of a CD policy?
Snow points out the danger of tautological arguments in favour of CD policies, supporting policies because they are essential or necessary (192). Here’s a quick bullet list of his “gentle reservations”:
- the problem of evaluation
- weaknesses of the conspectus model
- inflexibility and unresponsiveness to change
- duplication of work maintaining CD policy and approval plans
Recognizing that the conspectus model is kinda lame, I wonder how the other of Snow’s reservations might be addressed. His central concern seems to be that it is a waste of the bibliographer’s time to develop written policies, that the gnarly issue of collection evaluation and the development of approval plans (living documents that produce results) would be a better use of time. Yet he insists throughout his article on written policies, the implication being that institutions that don’t have written policies have unwritten ones. “Experienced bibliographers with a thorough familiarity with the curriculum often see little reason to commit their knowledge to the written page” (193). Perhaps I’m becoming too much of a bureaucrat, but it seems to me that an unwritten policy is no policy at all. OED gives “4. A principle or course of action adopted or proposed as desirable, advantageous, or expedient; esp. one formally advocated by a government, political party, etc. Also as a mass noun: method of acting on matters of principle, settled practice. (Now the usual sense.)” as its definition, so I stand somewhat corrected; but it still seems as though for purposes of communication and clarification, a written policy document is the way to go.
Posted by pzed on December 13, 2006 at 12.29pm
