Media Collection Management

PURPOSE OF THE COLLECTION MANAGEMENT POLICY:

This policy is established to guide the library staff in the management of the collection and inform the administration, teachers, staff, students and the community of the principles upon which the library makes decisions regarding the development and maintenance of the collection.   This statement will inform them of:

• Criteria for and the process of acquiring new materials

• Responsibilities for materials selection

• Guidelines for accepting gifts to the media center

• Policy for maintaining and evaluating the collection

• Policy for challenged materials

• Policy for weeding materials

CRITERIA FOR SELECTING A VENDOR:

• Reputation of the supplier

• Price and discounts

• Turnaround time

• Type of materials provided 

• Materials are shipped directly to the school.  

• Number of titles in stock

• Services offered

• Quality of MARC records and processing

• Accuracy in filling orders

• Reports

PROCEDURES FOR ACQUISITION:

• The media specialist verifies the availability of funds.

• A vendor/publisher is selected according to the criteria stated.

• A request for a purchase order is prepared and entered into MUNIS (or the current online purchasing system).

• The Principal approves the request and submits it to the central office for processing.

• The Director of Accounting must approve the request.

• When materials are received, the media specialist verifies the order and returns the signed invoice to the central office. 

WEEDING MATERIALS:

Every library's print collection is limited by the space available to house it, and collections should change over time to reflect changes in the community and in the library's goals. Weeding is a periodic or continual evaluation of resources intended to remove items that are no longer useful from the collection.  When libraries do not weed regularly or consistently, patrons have trouble finding interesting and relevant materials. Removing outdated or worn-out items makes the collection more visually attractive and more inviting to users. Patrons trust the library to supply information that is easy to find and up-to-date. 

WEEDING CRITERIA:

• Poor physical shape

• Poor format

• Poor content:

1. Out of date, especially computers, science, medicine, technology, geography, travel, transportation, telecommunication, popular culture

2. Trivial subject or approach

3. Inaccurate information

4. Superseded editions

• Inappropriate for the specific collection

1. Neither circulated nor used for reference

2. Unnecessary titles in little-used subject areas

3. Interest or reading level inappropriate for clients

4. Change in curriculum and/or age group served

Automated circulation systems can easily provide records to use in objective standards to identify possible candidates for weeding. The number of circulations for each item is accumulated by the computer system. Lists can be generated of items with low circulation over a set period of shelf life determined by the media specialist. 

WEEDING PROCEDURES:

• PHASE ONE: Identify cutoff circulation records. One might want to identify any item that has not circulated in the past two years.

• PHASE TWO: Identify cutoff copyright date. It may be useful to have different dates for various areas of the collection; 10 years for fiction, 5 years for encyclopedias, 1 year for computer books.

• PHASE THREE: Identify items in poor physical condition. 

• PHASE FOUR: Items identified by these steps should be checked against standard lists. Those items included on the lists should be flagged for further evaluation by the professional staff. 

• PHASE FIVE: Teachers in appropriate subject areas can be asked to identify items they desire to be retained. 

• PHASE SIX: The professional staff may use subjective criteria for evaluating items suggested for weeding. 

• PHASE SEVEN: Items to be retained should have poor physical condition remedied by repair, rebinding, or replacement. 

• PHASE EIGHT: Items to be weeded should be removed from shelf list, catalog, or computer records. Items should be physically disposed of.  Encyclopedias and reference materials should not be recycled into classrooms.