Curiouser and Curiouser: A Pilot for Digital Content Acquisition at the Library of Congress (Jacquelyn Hart) ----
The Library of Congress is ramping up its digital collecting, with an eye toward access for users everywhere. Dr. Hayden’s new Digital Strategy directs us to throw open the treasure chest, connect, and invest in our future. To this end, a diverse group from across the Library has joined forces to develop a pilot procedure to acquire born-digital monographs: recommendation, acquisition, cataloging, preservation, and access. If this sounds to you like print acquisitions, that is no accident! We aim to streamline digital acquisitions along with print, while also helping meet goals in the Library’s Digital Collecting Plan. The uninitiated can easily fall down a rabbit hole grappling with complicated rights restrictions, content transfer methods, or eBook cataloging, but our group is ready to help. Thanks to enthusiastic collaboration between reference librarians, acquisitions librarians, catalogers, and key support staff, our standardized yet nuanced workflow is adaptable to many different contexts across the Library. In other words, the opposite of the Dodo’s Caucus Race! In our final year of this initiative, we will seek more participation from reference and acquisitions librarians to select digital content and make it accessible to users.
Glimpsing into the Future: Using the Curriculum Process System for Collection Development (Jennifer Young)----
One common problem facing academic libraries is the art of materials selection that ensures users have what they need when they need it, or at least the majority of the time. Methods frequently used are librarian selectors, faculty selectors, approval plans, standing orders, and demand-driven acquisitions. Having close relationships with teaching faculty is pertinent when acquiring monographs to support the courses currently offered as well as those upcoming. However, when that relationship is not strong libraries must find other methods to gather that valuable insight. One of those methods is the curriculum process system.
This presentation will cover how East Tennessee State University’s library uses the curriculum process system to inform collection development, more specifically the monograph collection. The library’s acquisitions librarian reviews every new course and program at the university. This gives the library an outstanding opportunity to share what the library already has to support the course/program with the faculty and to view what the faculty member thinks are the most important supplemental resources for the course. This has proven to be an extremely effective method of indirectly gathering collection input from teaching faculty.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Revise: Ongoing Efforts to Create Environmentally Friendly Acquisitions Practices at an Academic Library (Nicole Wood)----
Libraries are champions of reusing materials, but additional efforts should be made to uphold the other two R’s of the waste management hierarchy: reduce and recycle. According to the American Library Association’s Green Libraries guide, “Libraries by their very nature are ‘green’ in that their resources are shared by the larger community.” Suggestions for expanding on positive environmental practices include reducing waste production, green buildings, and minimizing the consumption of resources. How can these suggestions be practically implemented by a library with a stagnant or declining budget? What are some examples of sustainable changes that won’t break the bank?
This presentation will begin with an overview of the efforts made at a mid-sized public university to create sustainable acquisitions practices at no cost. Practical solutions include reusing everything from shipping packaging to book covers, investing in low-cost carbon offsetting, and collaborating with local libraries, campus committees, and recycling centers to find the most efficient way to recycle weeded materials. Time will be set aside for a group discussion on frustrations, triumphs, and efforts being made at other libraries. Discussions may include everything from swapping paper receipts for email receipts to instruction and education initiatives that encourage students to be mindful of their waste production. Vendors are welcome to attend and provide insight on shipping practices, recyclable packaging, and various ways that libraries can work with them to reduce carbon emissions.
Incoming!: Strategies for Surviving the Barrage of Vendor Communications (Edward Lener)----
For those in collection management, dealing with vendors is an integral part of the job. Yet the sheer volume of emails, phone calls, and other communications from vendors can sometimes leave one feeling as though under assault. This session will analyze real-world examples of vendor communications and assess their relevance and usefulness. Attendees will also learn tips and strategies for managing such communications in a time effective way. Conveying library needs and expectations back to vendors, for example, is a critical step. For their part, vendors will have an opportunity to hear what works and what doesn’t from a librarian’s perspective so that they may in turn learn to communicate more efficiently with their customers.
Tangled Up in Books: Using the Lyrics of Bob Dylan to Understand the Changing Times of Collection Development (Tom Karel)---
I have been an academic librarian for 42 years and have seen many significant changes in the operations and purpose of libraries. Now, as my career is nearing its end, I find myself reflecting on past practices. As I think about all of this, many lines from my man, Bob Dylan, leap into my head. This will be a brief review of how collection development has changed with appropriate Bob Dylan lyrics cited for each practice and process. For example: How the introduction of approval plans, DDA, ebooks, videos, and streaming media changed the playing field – “There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief” (“All along the Watchtower”). Attendees may come away from this talk with a new way of looking at library functions (and a new appreciation for Bob Dylan).
