You are here

An Infopeople Online Learning Course

Start:
July 16th, 2019 12:00 PM
End:
August 12th, 2019 9:00 PM
All attendees $200.00

mary kellyholly hibnerInstructors: Holly Hibner and Mary Kelly

A library's collection is instrumental in helping the library achieve its mission and big-picture goals, but it requires active management and quality control. Are you feeling a little overwhelmed by your collection duties? Have you inherited a messy collection? Are people frustrated with finding items in the library catalog? Our holistic approach to collection management will help all types and sizes of libraries to keep pace with the demands and expectations of their communities.

Using the mission of the library as a framework, you can tame and shape your library's collection to work within budget and space parameters and serve your library's users.

In this online course you will learn practical collection management strategies in the areas of:

  • Policy and other collection management documents
  • Holistic collection management, from selection through weeding and everything in between
  • The public relations aspect of collection management
  • Collection budgets and fiscal considerations
  • Data analysis through collection metrics and statistics

We will also teach you how to communicate those strategies to stakeholders like staff, trustees, and patrons. Understanding the basics of collection management is essential to everyone in library service, regardless of their role. This class will inspire you with new approaches to collection management that improve efficiency and communication, and which emphasize how the library's collection can help achieve its mission and big-picture goals.

Course Description: This four-week online course will take a big-picture look at the mission of a library and how the collection works toward serving that mission. Through readings, assignments and online discussion forums, you will be able to create a working collection management policy, and drill down to actionable activities that support that policy. You will be encouraged to view collection management as an entire life cycle, beyond just selection and weeding. Learners will be able to navigate a large weeding project, with a weeding plan that considers what to remove and how to remove it, ensuring public relations success. We will also look at collection budgets and learn how to efficiently allocate library resources. In addition, we will consider various reports that help collection managers analyze the collection in new ways. You will come away with sample policies, budgets, and reports, collection benchmarks and objectives, as well as best practices and practical methods that can be immediately applied to your own library’s collection management efforts. There will be one live online meeting on Thursday July 25 @1pm Pacific Time. An archived recording will be made available to those who can’t attend.

 

Course Outline: When you log in to the Infopeople online learning site, you will see weekly modules with these topics:

  • Week 1: Collection Management Policies
    • Library goals and mission
    • Collection philosophy
    • Equity, diversity & inclusion
    • Intellectual Freedom
    • Policy structure: sample documents
    • Collection objectives and benchmarks
  • Week 2: Collection Life Cycle
    • Selection
    • Acquisitions
    • Processing & Cataloging
    • Shelving and Use
    • Repair & Maintenance
    • Weeding
      • Public Relations
      • Weeding Plans
      • Ongoing & Continuous
  • Week 3: Collection Budgets and Fiscal Considerations
    • Budget document formats
    • Return on investment
    • Print vs. digital
    • Purchase orders
    • Encumbrances
    • Budget planning
  • Week 4: Collection Metrics, Statistics, and Reports
    • Circulation over time
    • Turnover
    • Average age vs. median age
    • Group metrics and Item metrics
    • Relative use
    • Physical Inventory
    • Shifting and shelf balancing
    • Linear space

Pre-course Assignment: Please spend 15-20 minutes taking a look at the website http://awfullibrarybooks.net.

Time Required: To complete this course, you can expect to spend 2-1/2 hours per week, for a total of 10 course hours. Each week's module contains readings and various options for assignments, discussions, or online meetings. You can choose the options most relevant to your work and interests. Although you can work on each module at your own pace, at any hour of the day or night, it is recommended that you complete each week's work within that week to stay in sync with other learners.

There will be one live online meeting in this course on Thursday July 25 @1pm Pacific Time. (The meeting will be archived but you are strongly encouraged to attend in real time to derive maximum benefit from interaction with the instructor.)

Who Should Take This Course: Library workers in all areas of collection management, including but not limited to collection development, technical services, and circulation.

Online Learning Details and System Requirements may be found at: infopeople.org/training/online_learning_details.

After the official end date for the course, the instructor will be available for limited consultation and support for two more weeks, and the course material will stay up for an additional two weeks after that. These extra weeks give those who have fallen behind time to work independently to complete the course.

Keywords: collection management