Collection Management at Taber Public Library

1. BUILDING OUR
COLLECTION
Collection Management at Taber Public Library
Heather Martin-Detka, BA, MLIS
CARLS Training Day

2. Today I’ll be talking about…
 CREW
 Items coming in
 Collection analysis
 Statistics
 Local interests
 Collection purchasing
 Budget breakdown
 Reviews
 Items going out
 Weeding
 Best Practices
 MUSTY
 “Overstock” collections - one in, two out

3. Collection Management with CREW
CREW
Continuous
Review
Evaluation
Weeding
LPL, 2017.

4. Items Coming In: Collection Analysis
 Statistics
 Collection HQ
 Fiction
 Popular Authors
 Collection Use Summary
 Nonfiction
 Collection Use Summary
 Local Interest
 Requests
 Bibliocommons
 Talking with patrons
 Local newspaper
 Other media sources

5. Items Coming In: Collection Purchasing
 Formalized Budget Breakdown – 2018
 Formalized budget “Lessons Learned”
 Include all Fund IDs
 Include all “extra” orders (Crabtree etc., Summer Reading)
 Still check that you’re on budget
 Reviews
 Kirkus Reviews
 Publisher’s Weekly
Order # of Orders Budget/Order Total
Bibliocommons Requests 12 200 2400
DVD/CD Orders 12 422.08 5064.96
Hot List Orders 3 1688.33 5064.99
Super Forthcoming 6 844.16 5064.96
Total 17594.91

6. Items Going Out: Weeding
 Best Practices
 PLSB (2018): a town Taber’s size should have 25 000 items or 3 items/capita
 At the end of 2017 TPL had over 40 000 items
 Many collections are ‘overstocked’
 Many items fit within MUSTY below, meaning they should be tossed
 MUSTY (Allen, 2010)
 Misleading
 Ugly
 Superseded
 Trivial
 Your Collection
 Overstocked collections: 1 item in, 2 items out
 Our overstocked collections seem to be ones with ‘fads’. Starting in late 2018, if we know there is a
cookbook people would want, we’ll order it, but we’ll use that cookbook to ‘replace’ two MUSTY
items.

7. Questions?

8. References
 Allen, M. (2010). Weed 'Em and Reap: The Art of Weeding to Avoid Criticism. Library
Media Connection, 28(6), 32.
 Lehman, K. A. (2014). Collection Development and Management. Library Resources
& Technical Services, 58(3), 169-177
 Lethbridge Public Library. (2017). Collection Manual, 38.
 Public Library Services Branch. (2018). Best Practices For Public Libraries in Alberta,
17.

9. Thank you!
Heather Martin-Detka
manager@taberlibrary.ca