This week, your posts to the blog are OPTIONAL...not required for credit. I'm calling this type of optional activity "enrichment."
1) For
class members who are currently employed as a school librarian:
In "Collection Evaluation: a Foundation for Collection Development," the author provides us with 3 strategies for evaluating library collections: user-centered evaluation, physical assessment, and assessment of specific subject report. The thought of assessing, weeding and managing a large collection seems a bit overwhelming to me. (I hope I’m not the only ‘teacher working towards librarian’ who feels this way. :) )
In "Collection Evaluation: a Foundation for Collection Development," the author provides us with 3 strategies for evaluating library collections: user-centered evaluation, physical assessment, and assessment of specific subject report. The thought of assessing, weeding and managing a large collection seems a bit overwhelming to me. (I hope I’m not the only ‘teacher working towards librarian’ who feels this way. :) )
What advice can you offer for evaluating, managing and
continuously evolving an up-to-date collection that meets the needs of your
student population? Do you use any additional strategies besides the 3 that are
mentioned in this article?
2) In
"Collection Evaluation: a Foundation for Collection Development," the author
states, “collection ignorance may undermine material selection for future
collection development and mean a crumbling foundation for building the best
possible collection.” (p. 93) In your opinion, how might an ignorance of
available resources within your collection affect material selection in the
future?
3) In
her article, Making Your Collections Work for You: Collection Evaluation Myths
and Realities, Sheila Inter states, “Collection evaluation is surrounded by
myths. Librarians have subscribed to the myths and used them to avoid getting
down to the nitty-gritty business of evaluating their collections, in my
opinion, because it is a difficult and time-consuming task involving numbers.”
Do you agree with this statement? How might an avoidance to evaluate your
collection affect your ability to meet the informational and recreational needs
of your students?
--Megan Pearson
--Megan Pearson
I think the first step is really getting to know your collection before you weed anything. I've inherited a collection that is around 30 years old. It's hard to get a good view of your collection through the computer. So, the first thing I did was "read' the shelves and I try to do this every week. This serves two purposes: getting the books back in order and figuring out what you have. It takes a little time, but you will discover some hidden gems and books not in their proper home (lost). It also makes your collection more usable by your community. The first time I read the shelves, I did not weed. I took notes and left myself markers within this shelves that gave me visual cues on areas to go back and visit. I also watch how my kids used the collection. I'm still in the stacks helping them find resources, but I also watch the kids around me and notice what they pick up and what they walk past.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your response, Lana! Getting a collection back in order and finding the "lost" books sounds like a great starting point before weeding. I'm sure there are quite a few of those hidden gems, especially in older collections. The Collection Analysis and Deselection assignment makes me feel a little better about the task of weeding when I get a library of my own. I can tell it will be a time-consuming process, but necessary to keep my collection up to date and reliable for the students.
ReplyDeleteResponse for Question 2:
ReplyDeleteI believe not being familiar with the resources available in your collection will have a negative impact on future purchase for the libraries collection. I'm not in the library, but I was able to analyze a section of my campus' library where I teach and it was an eye opener. There were several books that were out of place, and several that are in need of replacements. As a future librarian, I believe it is important to know exactly what you have in your collection to better serve the needs of both teachers and students. I now understand why a librarian must take the time to weed the collection often. Having the most up to date information for our patrons is crucial in our role as future librarians.
I agree, Melissa, The weeding assignment was a real eye opener for me as well. I didn't find any books that were out of place, but there were quite a few that have been well loved and need to be replaced.
DeleteWhen I read Sheila Inter's article I had to laugh. The myths that she describes would be something that I would say if I were a librarian. As a teacher we come up with the wildest reasons as to why something didn't get done or in the way we wanted to. But ultimately this doesn't ever really solve the problem that we are having, nor do we ever place responsibility on ourselves as part of the problem. Now naturally not all of us do this, but more often than not as humans we've dealt with a problem like this at one point in our lives.
ReplyDeleteThis piece does a great job at pointing out those problems when it comes to evaluating a collection and gets to the root as to why librarians do and say the things they do and more importantly, how to fix it. As a budding librarian I found this to be an highly valuable resource that is going to prevent many of these myths and issues and allow me to do what is necessary (no matter how painful).
I whole heartedly agree with Inter when she states that this task is avoided because of the time consuming nature of it as well as the fact that when it comes to numbers many people shy away from them because they are intimidating (especially when it comes to thousands of books). But if we neglect this task we run the risk of having a "bad" collection and not meeting the needs of our students and staff, which is why we're there in the first place.
I agree James. Although it seems like a daunting task, due to time and perhaps getting the help we need to complete it, it must not be avoided. Otherwise, we will end up with a "bad" collection.
DeleteAs Lana states, even if we inherited the collection, we must get to know what we have and evaluate what is being circulated and what is not. Good idea Lana.
Thanks for the first hand tips.
Sandra
This article made me laugh as well. I tend to wait until the last minute when it comes to intimidating tasks. However, while working on my weeding assignment, I discovered quite a few books that need to be replaced. I now see how this task is crucial for maintaining a good collection. I will have to make myself stay on top of this task so the work does not pile up!
DeleteQuest. 3
ReplyDeleteI can see how librarians might use these “myths” to avoid getting down to business of evaluating their collections. As noted in her article, Intner states that it is “time-consuming, detailed and involves numbers.”(339) As a future librarian, I feel that we must strive to keep up with our collections and learn our “inventories” (library profiles). We must have “control of our collections.” The best way to get to know our collections is by inventorying them. How else are we going to know what is lacking, its quality, or how our collection looks to our patrons?
As I worked on this week’s weeding assignment, I evaluated a section from my local library. Wow, what an eye opener for me. I could tell that this particular section had not been weeded in quite a while. Using the “MUSTY” tool to evaluate, I found books dated from the 1970s, that were stained, “ugly,” and “trivial.” I looked them up on Titlewave, and found that they were no longer being printed. While this section did include up-to-date books, some of these older books were unattractive to patrons (me) and I felt should be discarded. I thought of: “Reality #5: More of what the public wants is better, but more of what they do not use is not.” (343)
This brings me back to my years in retail. Our collections had to be inventoried, out of season items were marked down and sold, and fresh new styles took their place. This is what draws in the client. Retailers are constantly comparing themselves with their competitors (peers). Isn’t this almost the same concept for our libraries? Why not do this for our library collections? After all, our patrons are our most valued clients. We want to keep them.
Just like businesses know their inventory well and are armed with their numbers to compete with others, as librarians, we too need to know the details of our own collections to be able to “back them up with hard facts. Numbers are compelling and the people who know what the numbers say are well armed for doing battle with both gloaters and detractors.”
I really like your analogy, Sandra. For my weeding assignment, I chose to analyze a section in my school's library titled, 'Popular Series.' While all the books are up to date, many of them are falling apart from being checked out so much. They definitely need to be replaced with new copies. However, with limited funding and the books' popularity, I can understand how the librarian would have a hard time disposing of these particular books!
DeleteWeek 7 wrap up:
ReplyDeleteThank you to Lana, Melissa, James, and Sandra for taking the time to contribute to the blog even though it wasn’t a requirement this week!
I feel like this week’s readings along with the weeding assignment opened our eyes to the importance of evaluating and weeding a collection to rid it of unused and out dated information. Though evaluating a collection seems like an intimidating and time consuming task, it is a necessary task to ensure that our students have access to valuable and up to date information. Thank you again for participating and enjoy your spring break!
Thank You Megan for leading the discussion this week.
Delete-Yilsa DLS
Megan, you rock.
ReplyDeleteQuestion #3
ReplyDeleteSorry I am a late responder-busy week.
I agree that sometimes librarians might put off the task of evaluating their collections for lack of time and because they might feel overwhelmed with the task at hand due to having large collections. To relate our readings to our in class "Weeding" assignment, I selected the Space & Astronomy section in our school library. I selected this section due to the fact that I knew that there had been some changes involving Pluto and I wanted to make sure that most of that collection was up to date. I never expected to have so many items in the collection that did not belong there to due inaccuracies stemming from the Pluto changes. Upon completing the assignment, my findings included almost half of the collection that I evaluated needed to be deselected. The fact that this particular science area has not been evaluated since our school opened, and patrons still continued to check out these books, is causing misleading information to be sent out to our public. As librarians, we have certain responsibilities and one is to be able to have a well balanced, up to date collection in order to be able to provide our patrons the best possible learning experience that we can . If one fails to do this, then, in essence, we could be misguiding our patrons.
-Yilsa DLS
Woops I forgot to mention that I am not working as a librarian yet.
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