Week 7: The Dark Side of Collection Development

This week I got to see collection development policies in action. In class we had talked about how necessary weeding or "deselection" is to maintaining a useful collection, especially in a public library. A librarian showed me the weeding policy for the MCPL and explained how it is meant to work in theory and how it actually works in practice. In theory specific sections would be weeded in 3 year rotations to keep it from being an overwhelming task. Librarians were to sign off each section as it got weeded in order. In practice though, weeding didn't happen for some sections as often as they had planned, and not everyone signed off. The librarian said they tended to only weed sections as needed. When they do get around to weeding, they do have guidelines to follow, specifically MUSTIE.

• Misleading and/or factually inaccurate: (this includes items that fail to have the substantial periods of time not represented because of the age of the material)
• Ugly (worn out beyond reasonable mending or having been poorly repaired in the past):
• Superseded by a new edition or a better source; (keep in mind the use of the Web as a better, more up-to-date source in many cases)
• Trivial (of no discernible literary or scientific merit & without sufficient use to justify keeping it);
• Irrelevant to the needs and interests of your community; (not used even though we may find it “interesting”!)
• Elsewhere (the material may be easily borrowed from another source or found on the Web)

I also got to see the importance of having a gifts and donation section in the overall collection development policy. A patron wanted to donate her collection of current Korean magazines to the library. She wanted to be guaranteed that they would be added into the collection and not sold in the Friends of the Library store or just thrown away. I was able to tell her that according to our policy, we could not make any guarantee about where materials will end up but that our selectors regularly review donations for materials to add to the collection. With that information, she decided she was going to think it over a bit longer before donating.

Tip of the Week: Make sure your collection development policy is available online, so you can refer to it quickly and easily if patrons have questions.

Article Annotation and Abstract Area
McEwan, Ian. "Separating The Wheat From The Chaff." Teacher Librarian 39.4 (2012): 33-34. Academic Search Premier. Web. 23 June 2012.

This article provides a humorous and detailed look at the criteria for deselecting or "weeding" books from the library collection. McEwan discusses the need for librarians to be ruthless in discarding books that overwhelmingly fulfill the library's deselection standards, regardless of any personal attachment. He emphasizes age, condition, circulation, and relevancy.