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Making a Collection Count: A holistic approach to library collection management

Holly Hibner, Plymouth District Library and Mary Kelly, Salem-South Lyon District Library, USA

 - offers practical applications for collection librarians and managers who are practitioners in the field. It is more than just a theoretical discussion of collection quality and collection management because useful, realistic advice is offered
 - this is not a book about collection development. It is unique in that the focus is on collection quality: making the most of a library collection budget, performing physical inventory, and gathering/using data and statistics about collections
 - broad, international appeal to various library types: public, academic, school, and special

Making a Collection Count takes a holistic look at library collection management. It connects the various pieces, such as selection, cataloguing, shelving, circulation, and weeding and teaches readers how to gather and analyze data from each point in a collection's life cycle. Relationships between collections and other library services, such as reference, programming, and technology, are explored as well. The result is a quality collection that is clean, current, relevant, and useful, and which connects and highlights various library services.

ISBN 1 84334 606 0
ISBN-13: 978 1 84334 606 7
August 2010
200 pages  234 x 156mm  paperback  
£45.00 / US$75.00 / €55.00

Not yet published

About the authors

Holly Hibner received an MLIS degree from Wayne State University in 1999. She is the Adult Services Coordinator at the Plymouth District Library in Plymouth, MI. Holly was the recipient of Michigan Library Association’s 2007 Loleta D. Fyan Award. Her special interests are collection management, roving reference and technology instruction.

Mary Kelly is a Reference Librarian at the Salem-South Lyon District Library in South Lyon, MI. She received MBA and MLIS degrees from Wayne State University. Mary’s special areas of interest include technology instruction, collection management, and library statistics.

Contents

Life cycle of a collection – materials selection; collection management policies; staff collaboration; purchasing, processing, use of library materials, circulation, inventory, shelving, status changes, and de-selection; Understanding your workflow – staff, budgets, timing; Collection organization – physical space, classification scheme; Physical inventory – rationale, why staff should spend the time on an inventory project, maintaining a quality collection, defining collections, monetary reasons to perform an inventory, intangible reasons to perform an inventory, steps to a successful inventory, discoveries, analysis, creating collection objectives, creating benchmarks; Everything is connected – reference service, technology, facility, programming.