Category: Practical Librarian
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Collection Management and Interlibrary Loan
A submission came in to Awful Library Books recently from a librarian who said they had an interlibrary loan request for an item that they were embarrassed to have in the collection. Rather than fulfill the request, they weeded the item. Plenty of commenters thought that the ILL request should…
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Collection Management Policies
Let’s talk about collection management policies. Stay with me, now! A library’s collection helps it meet its mission. The collection management policy explains how that will be accomplished. I’ve seen selection policies, deselection policies, and a gift policies, but that just is not enough. A fully-formed collection management policy is…
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The Mission-Collection Connection
A library’s collection exists to help the library meet its mission. When you are having trouble letting go of non-circulating library materials, or talking the Powers That Be into allowing you to do some weeding, this is a great point to make. I love the fortune cookie message in the…
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Primary Source Material in the Public Library
You may be tempted to keep older history materials, such as those written during the time the event was happening, because they are “important” or as valuable primary source material. Here’s the thing about primary sources: they are valuable and important; crucial to good research, even. Here’s the other thing…
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Size Matters: Estimating Shelf Capacity
Once upon a time, Holly mentioned that I had a special formula for determining shelving capacity. This brought about a flurry of requests from many people. The reality is that I had little scraps of paper with a few notes and a half-baked spreadsheet estimating the linear feet of available…
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Managing Periodicals
When I started my current job, I was assigned a collection to manage: periodicals. Honestly, I was less than excited about that. I was responsible for periodicals in my old job too, and was hoping to get away from it! I have a lot of admiration for librarians and library…
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