Collection
Development Policy
Introduction
This policy is intended to serve as a statement of the guidelines
used to develop and maintain the Library collections at the
Howard Colman Library at Rockford College. Rising costs, the
increasing availability of and demand for information in formats
other than print, and the wide and increasing array of publishing
output all require careful and methodical materials selection
in order to make the best use of our limited financial resources.
Objective
The main objective of the
Howard Colman Library is to build and maintain a strong,
coherent, balanced, and dynamic library collection which
supports the curriculum and educational mission of Rockford
College.
Fund
Allocation
The Director of the Howard Colman Library is responsible for
allocating the Library’s book budget in order to fulfill the
Library’s collection development objectives. Each academic
department on campus has a line-item fund within the Library
budget; that budget is the initial responsibility of faculty,
though any monies unencumbered at the end of the fiscal year
will be spent by the librarians. The Library also maintains
a line-item fund for General library materials, designed to
support the acquisition of materials of a general nature that
do not uniquely benefit any single department but which are
necessary for a well-rounded collection.
The funds within the book budget are designed to support the
academic departments that make up the College. Therefore,
the amount of money allotted to each department reflects such
factors as the number of courses offered by each department,
the level of courses (100, 400, graduate, etc.) offered within
a department, number of students enrolled in department classes,
and the average cost of individual books for each discipline.
Selection
Responsibility
Final responsibility for the selection of Library materials
and fulfillment of stated Collection Development objectives
rests with the Library faculty. However, the librarians rely
heavily on the teaching faculty to recommend new materials
for purchase to support their departments, as only the teaching
faculty have the in-depth subject knowledge necessary to guide
the library’s collection to best suit the needs of each department. It
is the librarians’ hope that the teaching faculty will monitor
their professional literature for appropriate additions to
the Library’s holdings, and will request purchase of all resources
most useful for course requirements and research needs.
Therefore, while departments each determine how their library
allocation is to be spent, Library faculty retain responsibility
for selecting materials from the General fund to maintain the
integrity and balance of the Library’s collection. Faculty
requests in excess of the allocated budget will be considered
at fiscal year’s end for purchase from the General fund, though
not at the sacrifice of necessary general purchases.
Student and staff requests
for materials acquisitions are also welcomed and encouraged
and will be reviewed according to the same selection guidelines
standards as are all other requests.
Selection
Guidelines
Emphasis should be placed on the selection of current materials,
since the Library and faculty have already reviewed and purchased
materials published each year during the past several decades
of continuing book selection. However, this does not preclude
purchasing materials of historic interest to a discipline,
purchasing materials from a wide time-frame for new areas of
collection, or filling gaps in existing collection areas caused
by oversights of previous selectors or biases of previous collection
policies.
The Library strives to collect as completely as is necessary
to support the courses taught by the College, but does not
strive for completeness for the sake of completeness.
The Library prefers to purchase well-made paperback books,
when available, in order to reduce costs. To ensure the longevity
of these materials, it is the Library’s policy that all paperback
books purchased through contracted vendors are strengthened
with plastic covers and spine reinforcements before shipment. The
Library pays a minimal service fee for supplies and labor on
the reinforcements. The combination of paperback price and
the reinforcement service fee is far more economical that a
policy of purchasing all hardcover books. Newly published
books only available in hardcover will be purchased in hardcover,
and requests that specific items be purchased in hardcover
will be honored when possible.
The Library does not collect textbooks. Individual exceptions
will be considered if a textbook is the only or best authoritative
source of information for a particular subject. Textbooks
donated by faculty desiring their addition to the collection
will also be considered on a case-by-case basis.
As a rule, the Library does not purchase duplicates of items
currently available in the collection. To purchase a duplicate
copy is to forgo purchasing something not owned, therefore
diminishing the resources available to users. However, certain
circumstances may warrant the purchase of a duplicate copy. Examples
include essential texts which experience heavy usage, resulting
in no copies on the shelf at any time, thus hindering access,
or extensive reserve assignments which would necessitate many
students using the same copy of a text. (Library funds should
not, however, be spent to allow students to avoid buying required
course materials.)
Non-Print
Materials
Faculty, student, and staff
requests for non-print materials, including but not limited
to videos, DVDs, sound recordings, and CD-ROMs, are evaluated
on the same basis as are books, with consideration given
to the ability of the Library or requesting department to
provide the appropriate technological support and equipment
necessary to use the material.
Serials
While the Library would like to provide the same level of
open-door service to serial publications as it provides to
monographic materials, serials are a more difficult acquisitions
issue. Serials require an on-going financial commitment instead
of a one-time price, and so must be carefully considered before
a subscription can be added to the Library. In addition, serials
prices have risen astronomically in recent years, straining
the Library’s periodicals budget, which has not increased proportionally. Therefore,
a request for a new periodical title generally must be accompanied
by a cancellation which would offset the added expense—a one-in,
one-out approach. Faculty wishing to add a subscription to
the Library are generally provided with a price and usage summary
of discipline-specific titles, and asked to review the subscriptions
in their subject discipline to identify a title that might
be discontinued.
Online
Resources
The Library is currently evaluating
online resources on a case-by-case basis, pending development
of more regularized procedures.
Deselection
Deselection, or ‘weeding’, of materials, is an important part
of managing a library’s holdings. The Library strives to collect
materials of the most use to our students, staff, and faculty
without allowing that collection to become badly out-of-date. To
achieve that goal, the Library faculty periodically and continuously
weed through segments of the collection to remove irrelevant,
outdated, unused, or badly damaged materials from the shelves. Books
in poor physical condition but which are considered worth keeping
will be mended or replaced as is possible. Materials de-selected
are withdrawn from the library catalog and discarded.
Weeding is best done by those who have in-depth knowledge
of the subject and can analyze the usefulness of the materials
on the shelves. Individual faculty and academic departments
are strongly encouraged to contact any of the Librarians about
weeding within their discipline, as they know best which materials
are most appropriate and relevant for their field.
Intellectual
Freedom
The Howard Colman Library supports the American Library Association’s
Bill of Rights, Code of Ethics, and its statement regarding
Challenged Materials. The Library attempts to purchase materials
which represent differing opinions on controversial matters,
and selects books without partisanship regarding race, gender,
sexual orientation, religion, or moral philosophy. |
