Collection Development part 2: Resources

Resources! You are not alone in trying to build and maintain your collection and there is lots of help out there.

Start with your in-house resources. Be familiar with your collection development policy as well as your policy for reconsideration of materials. We keep ours posted on our website (although not the specific form for asking to ban items - people have to come in person to get that, one of the ways we guard against outside groups.) A couple key points in ours are that we support the school curriculum, but we are not responsible for purchasing for it specifically, ergo I don't have to buy a bunch of books on the history of cheese only to have that teacher retire a year later (true story!). We take reviews into account, but we are not limited by reviews in professional journals. We've updated this policy a lot over the years - it used to be extremely specific, like I could only buy nonfiction in library or hardcover bindings (I ignored that). On top of that, are there specific metrics you need to meet? We used to have to meet certain county standards, which included number of materials per capita, which made it very difficult to weed (and led to some libraries reputedly barcoding their chairs and office equipment lol) but thankfully that is no longer a consideration, although I do keep an eye on my collection size.

There are lots of online resources out there, but these are some of the ones I prefer to use:

• CREW - The Texas State Library manual for weeding. Texas has a lot of problem when it comes to libraries (and everything else - as I said the last time I was talking to my family about going back to visit, I am not re-entering that hellscape any time soon) but CREW has always been a great resource. It can be useful in collection development not only in weeding, which is a vital part of your collection, but in purchasing nonfiction as there's handy sections on how old items should be.
• School Library Journal - A lot of their articles are free and they keep a number of excellent bloggers under their umbrella, but if you can afford a digital subscription, that's the ideal choice as you'll be able to look up items to see reviews.
• Other review journals - while I find it interesting to skim through other professional journals, I've found over the years that the titles they review and promote rarely align with what my patrons want to read. The exception to this is Publisher's Weekly and you don't need to purchase a subscription - the magazines are largely adult-focused anyways. You can sign up for their free newsletters and get regular run-downs of popular items being released as well as publication announcements.
• The blogging world has gotten significantly smaller, but there are a few people I still religiously follow, especially Ms. Yingling, for middle school titles and Nonfiction Detectives, which recently resumed. Some blogs have shifted to a newsletter format, like Latinx in Children's Lit and most other blogs that are still extant are under the umbrella of School Library Journal.

Your vendor will have resources available also, including curated lists, standing order IDs, and various promotions. We used to subscribe to Baker and Taylor's review services, which was super handy as it included all the professional reviews for each book, but it became prohibitively expensive and each department picked a single subscription instead - I got School Library Journal and the adult department got Publisher's Weekly. At least in Baker and Taylor, you don't have to actually subscribe to standing order IDs to use them - I keep a list and you just copy and paste the number to see all the new items in that series or by that author.

I also follow or subscribe to a lot of publishers for their announcements. Pretty much every major (and minor) publisher has a newsletter and I get announcements from Charlesbridge, Peachtree, Albert Whitman, Clavis, NorthSouth, HarperCollins, Papercutz, Nobrow/Flying Eye, Storey, and Sourcebooks to name a few. As a blogger, I've built up relationships with publishers and get notifications of new releases and books for review from them as well, including Penguin/Random (I will always regret their choice not to go for Random Penguin), Simon & Schuster, Phaidon, Andrews McMeel, Candlewick, and a series of small/independent publishers through publicity agents. One thing to be aware of, especially in webinars of publisher announcements, publishers universally suck at booktalking their books. It's useful to see what's coming out, but absolutely do not take them as your model for booktalking to kids, unless you're trying to lull the kids into somnolence. As a librarian, you can sign up for review copies on NetGalley and you can also make a free account and browse on Edelweiss - which often has samples, especially of picture books.

You may have noticed that I said nothing about those darlings of the academic collection development class, the Core Collections. In my opinion, they are overpriced and irrelevant for public library collections of my size. I am building and maintaining a dynamic, relevant collection for my communities changing needs and desires and not an historical collection or academic collection. What is "core" to your collection will change rapidly and somebody out there who hasn't ever been to your library or met your community certainly doesn't know what you (or they) want.

Does this sound exhausting? Collection development does not happen by itself. You need dedicated time for weeding, reviewing, selecting, and following all these resources. If your library wants a great collection, you need to set aside the time for that collection and the resources that support it.