(7) From: Werner Lind <wlind_at_mail.bluefield.edu>
As collection development librarian (among other things; this is a
small library, so we all fill various functions) I evaluate gifts and
decide what is
kept. The cataloger doesn't participate in these decisions unless I invite
her to do so, and
I find it quite surprising that any other library would allow a cataloger
veto power
over what he or she accepts for cataloging based on workload; I think that
could easily
give rise to serious abuses. The same principle, consistently applied, should
authorize whoever places your actual orders for purchased books to cull
your list of
selections based on how much time he or she wishes to spend placing
orders. (Of course,
technical service personnel should be able to arrange and prioritize their
work on their own; but that isn't the same as simply refusing to do certain
work.) If we assume that the selection of library materials is a
professional decision made on the
basis of serious thought, then it is absurd for someone who doesn't work in
the selection
field to treat any of your selection decisions cavalierly. Your director
should make
this clear.
As to your first question, gifts are addressed in Article X of our
collection policy,
but that article is quite brief and all it says about selection criteria is
that, "As a general rule, gift books will be added based on the same
criteria as purchased ones." Those criteria do allow for selection of some
books that don't directly
support any specific course; for instance, items of general or recreational
interest, materials for
faculty development, etc. We have a Christian fiction section supplied
mainly by donations; we take into account the needs of community patrons,
such as home schoolers, who use the library; and because of our location,
we often collect material that relates to Appalachian history and natural
history, society and culture, etc. I would think that some of these sorts
of criteria could cover the books you received about the early railroading
history of your area.
Hope this helps you to get your problem resolved. Best of luck to you!
(8) From: Marie Zaccone <mzaccone_at_yahoo.com>
Unfortunately Cynthia I run into the same problem in a small public
library. My tastes and the tech services department differ on what is
"addable" and what is not. Usually if I state my reasons after questioning
they will let my selection stay. We don't have any concrete policy and it
is highly subjective but usually it is up to my discretion without much
objection from the catalog department.
(9) From: "Linwood DeLong" <linwood.delong_at_uwinnipeg.ca>
You have raised an interesting question. I'm sure that ours is not the
only library that receives many offers of donations of "great books" or
"important books that my Aunt Emma or Uncle Charlie had for many years".
We will be updating our collection development policy soon. Briefly,
for a successful donation plan to work well you need a few things.
1. Some mechanism to screen out material that you obviously won't even
consider. Whenever possible, we try to receive a list of titles from a
potential donor or a fairly good indication of what will be in the
collection. We can eliminate quite a bit of material right off the
bat.
2. A fairly good consensus about what should be in the collection (= a
good collection development statement) and about who should decide that.
In our institution, the cataloguing staff generally wouldn't reject a
donation, unless it appeared to be an obvious blooper or was clearly a
duplicate item. In our case, we rely quite a bit on the judgement of
faculty members, as well as librarian subject specialists, but faculty
members and librarians will always have slightly different visions of
what should be in your library collection. I guess it's a mixture of
finding someone who shares your vision or expresses what you think is
the institution's vision, but occasionally talking to someone with a
different vision, to make sure that you aren't getting totally off
track.
You can also use the catalogues ("catalogs" in the U.S.) of sister
libraries as a guide, if there is one that is readily available to you.
If you think of library X, Y, or Z as similar in scope or mission or
size to your own, and if you think that the librarians there make
"sensible" decisions about their collection, it can be useful to compare
potential donations against their collections. In the case of
undergraduate institutions like ours, that's fairly easy to do. Your
library may be a unique one and may not have obvious sister libraries
with searchable online catalogues (catalogs).
Linwood DeLong
Reference Coordinator
University of Winnipeg Library
515 Portage Ave.
Winnipeg, MB, Canada
R3B 2E9
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(10) From: Dianne Cook <cookdc_at_post.queensu.ca>
Subject: Re: CDL-Judging Gift Books
Deciding the merits of incoming material, however it is acquired,
is always a challenge. There is always useful material that is very
difficult to catalogue and store (we hope some of this will be
digital in future), and some element of measuring the cost of
cataloguing, storage and preservation against potential value to
teaching and research always factors into collections decisions.
I doubt anyone can answer these questions for other institutions.
My response to this is a series of questions.
1. Why should the manner of acquiring an item affect how it fits
your collecting policy? (I am assuming that you determine which
subjects you want to collect to what level, and that your acquisitions
budget limitations may restrict what you can buy so you fill in with
gifts.)
2. Does today's curriculum entirely determine what you collect, or
does it determine your first priorities for purchase owing to budget
limitations?
3. Are the collections librarians or the cataloguers considered the
collection-development experts in your institution? If material cannot
be catalogued, can it be housed and hand-listed or dealt with in some
other way?
4. Do you have a policy of collecting local materials in greater depth
than other areas?
5. Is it possible to design any collection policy to cover every item
of potential interest to your collection?
5. "Dated", in my humble opinion, should not normally be an issue in a
research library, though it might be in a public library.
6. "Popular" is a subjective decision that has to be guided by local
collection policy. We certainly reject some material as too popular,
though there is some interest in popular culture and the mass media,
for example.
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(11) From: "Helen P. Mack" <hpm0_at_Lehigh.EDU>
First of all, why is the cataloger telling you how to do your job? Why
does this person return books to you that he/she considers too popular or
dated, when it was your decision to keep them? Certainly it takes time to
catalog books, but the cataloging of gifts can be considered a lower
priority than purchased mterials. When there's a little slack time,
perhaps during the summer, then the cataloger can catch up with the gifts
backlog.
Our collection development policy states that donated materials are
retained if their content supports the curriculum, but it does not
specifically address the reverse, i.e. if their content does not support
the curriculum -- which, depending on the gift, can be a reason not to keep
certain things. "Supporting the curriculum" is defined rather loosely. In
your case, there would not have to be a course on trains, but such
materials could be used for a student project on U.S. transportation,
commerce, local history, etc. Perhaps such materials could even be
considered for your Special Collections area because of their value as
local history.
At my institution, I make the retention decisions for the most part. There
are times, however, when I consult with faculty, with librarians who are
subject specialists, or with our Director of Collection Management. But I
have the final decision, because after I see what they select, the items
are checked against our holdings to see if we already have them.
My advice to you is to stick to your guns. It is your job to have the
total collection, its strengths and weaknesses, in mind when you make
retention decisions. It is your job to guide all acquisitions to fill gaps
insofar as the curriculum is concerned, as well as to enhance it in related
areas. Good luck!
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(12) From: "Waldman, Glenys" <gawaldman_at_pagrandlodge.org>
Here is the relevant excerpt from the de-acquisitions part of the policy
for the Masonic Library and Museum of Pennsylvania, which is, as you can
figure out, a special library. Please look at our website
<http://www.pagrandlodge.org>www.pagrandlodge.org to get an idea of what
we're all about, because obviously that affects policy. It can be applied
to a gift, which we only accept "free and clear" - no strings attached -
before it ever makes it into the collection.
1. PHILOSOPHICAL
The Collections are also enhanced (as a well pruned tree or well-tended
garden) by the culling or de acquisition of duplicate and out of scope
materials. De-Acquisition and its accompanying record-keeping, de
accessioning, is the permanent removal of an owned object from the
collections. De acquisition is not a cure for sloppy
collecting! Intelligent culling shows that the institution is an
educational organization, not a warehouse! If a Board written/approved
policy is used in good faith, it is hard to make a legal or ethical error,
because if other reasonable people could reach the same decision, then
legally the Board is on firm ground.
Therefore the institution should:
1. Review and cull collections periodically.
2. Keep records and any other relevant information on culled items.
3. Be willing to make public disclosure (including note of where the item
has gone and for what proceeds, if any, were used).
Items may be disposed of, so long as there is no prohibition thereof under
the terms of gift made by a former owner and accepted by The Masonic
Library and Museum of Pennsylvania.
2. PRACTICAL
a. De acquisition requires scrupulous examination, and is considered only
when one or more of the following criteria are met:
1. Material is clearly outside the collecting scope of The Masonic Library
and Museum of Pennsylvania.
2. Material duplicates exactly a better example, edition, or image.
NB The Museum will retain no more than two (2) identical copies of an
artifact. For the Library: one copy of each edition or state of a book
shall be retained. Insofar as possible, every item in the Circulating
Library and Reference shall have a back-up in the Stacks. The Staff will
decide which copies shall be retained and have the right to keep more than
two, if value (e.g. association, rarity) warrants retention.
3. Removal of material will not affect the research, study or exhibition
value of remaining material.
4. The Board of Directors and Staff agree that the material cannot be
properly cared for, exhibited or made available for study or research.
Glenys A. Waldman, PhD
Librarian
The Masonic Library and Museum of Pennsylvania
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(13) From: segal_at_sparta.rice.edu
At Fondren Library, Rice University decisions as to whether to keep or not
keep a gift book are made by the collection development library in the
relevant field (I'm OK, You're OK to the psychology selector, etc.). The
catalogers have one day a month that is "gift day", and they catalog as
much as they can from the "to be cataloged" shelf of gift books. On other
days they don't catalog gift books unless we make a special request.
Jane Segal
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(14) From: "Steinhoff, Cindy" <cksteinhoff_at_aacc.edu>
We are the recipient of many donated books (both a good and bad
thing). Our collection development policy notes that donations are judged
by the same criteria as any book that we are are considering for the
collection. In your example below, the books detailing early train service
in the region would be added to our collection, because we collect just
about everything that relates to local history, even if it is of a more
popular nature.
The collection development librarian (which happens to be me at the moment)
decides which donated books to add to the collection and which ones are
sold through our used books sale. I will consult subject specialists if
the topic is one that I am not familiar with and the reference staff is
often consulted, as they are the staff members in the library most familiar
with student information needs and topics. Most of the books we receive
can be evaluated pretty quickly - it's a good Friday afternoon project.
I'm happy to answer other questions off-list, if you have any.
Cynthia Steinhoff
Director of the Library
Anne Arundel Community College
Arnold, MD
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(15) From: "Sara Williams" <swilli16_at_utk.edu>
All of our selection decisions are made by the subject librarians -- this
includes
gifts. Our Donor Policy is available at:
http://www.lib.utk.edu/~colldev/donor.html
As to specific criteria, that's left to the judgement of the subject
librarians and
to their understanding of the needs of their academic departments. We try
to avoid
duplication and to restrict our acceptance to materials in good physical
condition.
Donated materials that we don't accept go into the book sale, which is a
popular
annual event on campus.
While our catalogers don't make retention decisions, they do have some
latitude in
prioritizing their own work. In general, titles that have been purchased are
cataloged first, followed by gifts. Since the bulk of our approval plan
titles now
arrive with catalog records supplied by the vendor, our catalogers have
been able to
add gift materials reasonably quickly.
That said, I agree with those who described this as a problem in policy and
politics. It's time to get your administrators involved in clarifying the
respective
roles of collection development and cataloging.
Sara R. Williams
Collection Management Coordinator
University of Tennessee Libraries
Knoxville TN 37996-1000
(865) 974-6949
swilli16_at_utk.edu
saraw_at_aztec.lib.utk.edu
Received on Tue Mar 09 2004 - 12:12:33 EST