Collection Development Meeting

Painting The Writing Master by Thomas Eakins 1882

Collection Development Meeting

I did not get a chance to go to the conference today because we had a special visit from a Rutgers University Professor, Kay Cassell who is an Assistant Professor at SCILS. She gave a three hour talk called Developing A Public Library Collection in the Electronic Age.

A lot of people came to hear her speak from all over the library system. She spoke for three hours. We had coffee and cake. She gave a simple two page handout for us to go over. Most of the things suggested were practical in nature.

Some of the subjects which people were interested in were free electronic resources, providing good free reference service, how to deal with old books by popular authors, and what is a good core collection.

There was a brief mention that Library Journal now had reviews for electronic resources online for free. Also, we should not just look to libraries to learn how to find things, we should look outside. The Book Expo America was mentioned as a good place for Collection Development Librarians to go to. Book Expo America is on May 29-31 at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan, New York.

There were a few things that were discussed which I found interesting. There were a variety of databases mentioned which we did not own, Chilton's Car Repair Manuals online, JStore, and Tell Me More (A language learning program.) She reminded us that we should not have a lot of databases, but a few strong useful databases. A favorite ebook resource was the Gale Biographical databases. We are currently looking at Hoover's.

There was a small amount of talk about ebooks. Mostly people talked about Overdrive which is the ebook package which is ordered through our library system. We mainly purchase audiobooks through Overdrive. She mentioned that travel books and computer books make excellent ebook purchases. There was a reminder in New York Public Library, they only bought books as individual titles for ebooks because they did not like the bundles which included too much older material.

There was a reminder that less reference books are being produced in print. People are turning to online resources because they provide quick short answers that are often as good as book sources.

Another big problem is that magazines and newspapers are increasingly becoming electronic. The Christian Science Monitor is moving to a daily online format and PC Magazine is becoming an online only publication. Many people are reading most of their magazines and newspapers online. The old fashioned sitting with the newspaper is slowly becoming a thing of the past.

In addition to buying ebooks we should be looking at a variety of formats. We learned at one library the kids were not using boxes like Xbox, they were using DS handheld games. Also, the average age of a gamer is 33 years old, close to middle aged.

An idea which we may consider is creating a "virtual library" of all our online resources in a single place on a web page. This makes it easier to manage online resources. One person mentioned that they used Shelfari, the social networking tool as part of their library home page.

She reminded us that we should survey our patrons to find out what they want. They should not just be surveyed; people also should be invited to do small focus groups on what they wanted to see in their neighborhood library.

She told us her copy machine makes PDFs of documents. This kind of blew me away. We have nothing like this at our libraries. Academic libraries are way ahead of public libraries in terms of electronic resources. They require people to do their homework using electronic databases unlike public libraries.

She suggested that we look at the Wharton Grove Public Library collection development policy. She told us that Wharton Grove breaks down their weeding policy by dewey number. We should also have an electronic resources policy to make sure there are rules around the use of computers.

There was a little bit about weeding. Some people mentioned that they sent some of their discards to Better World Books which sells discarded library books and sends a percentage of the money back to the library which gave them the books. Also, it is not a bad idea to give some of your discards to local agencies. When I was in Brooklyn Public Library, they often sent some of their discards or gift books to the prison libraries to help them.

Towards the end of the conversation, Sony Ereader and Kindle were mentioned. It was reminded to us that there are some libraries that are lending out Kindle ereaders to the public. We badly need to catch up with technology. Things like blogs provide excellent two way communications between patrons and the library.

The room was packed with librarians. It was well worth going to the meeting.