Thorough Evaluation of the Collection

Since it’s the beginning of the month  I want to take the opportunity to share the steps in performing a thorough evaluation of the collection.  There are several tools available to you.   Take a look at the video which runs about 3 minutes.

#1 Review the Collection Maintenance Calendar on the Intranet or the blog

#2 Review the Collection Maintenance Guidelines (Specific criteria for evaluating content for various segments of the collection)

#3  Obtain a Dusty Shelf Report and review how to use it.  This report serves 2 important functions. 

1. Identifies items in that are not circulating in a floating collection: items that may need to be removed from the collection due to lack of demand or reallocated to another library
2. Opportunity to put items in Trace if they are not found:  accountability of the materials and CARL database accuracy

#4 Use the SINC form on the Intranet to let collection development know that  an item may need to be replaced

After all of this if the are sections of shelving that are too full , then it’s time go through the shelves item by item to apply condition /content criteria and determine if it can be moved on through reallocation, review or purge.

Reallocating new materials/multiple copies or removing obviously damaged items are only a fraction of what it takes to keep the collection in good shape.

Remember this video just serves as a refresher of Collection Maintenance procedures.  All of the documents on the Intranet provide the specific details.

BTW:  let me know if there are topics you’d like for me to cover in the future.  The next video will be examples of items sent in for mending that we are going to mend