Title: Collection Development as a political process: a case from Norway.
Paper at the 9th Northumbria Conference on Performance Measurement in Libraries & Infomration Services
9th northumbria collection development as a political process
1. Collection development as a political process: a case from Norway Jannicke Røgler, Buskerud County Library 9th Northumbria Conference Parallel Session 4 – Quality Strand - Behavioural Aspects
Thanking you for inviting me to share som expriences with you on collection development in Norway. The picture show Knight ”Page Turner” opening the book-castle at the Joint library of Drammen earlier this summer.
The task of The Buskerud County Library is to help more than twenty local libraries, serving about 300 000 thousand persons, to develop their services – and also to gain political support – at the municipal level During the last three years we have developed a rather high-profile approach to local modernization, with an emphasis on massive weeding of collections The map indicates the places the Buskerud Bandits has been weeding
I've been a bandit since 2007 and I love it! Starting as a local initiativ in a small public library, we now see that our work has moved on to gain a lot of national attention We publish all results, pictures, videos, charts etc on the Internet, with extensive use of social media On the picture you see an exhausted library director lying on top of the weeded books reading a novel called ”the end is near”
What we are really interested in is to learn of the effects we see from our work, and if there are som effects we can measure?
Our high profile and focus on library development got us the award ”Library of the year 2010, twentyten” It is the Norwegian Library Association that present the award, and it was the leader of the Cultural Comittee at the Parliament that assigned the award We made sure that proud local politicians took part of our victory and made it an award for Buskerud County as a whole. The prize got us coverage in national news media
In September there will be kommune- og fylkestingsvalg A conservative party in Buskerud give special attention to The Buskerud County Library in their party program Our high profile got us attention from the stake- holders
We have had a special focus on turnover rate, to show the librarians just how crammed the shelves in Norwegian libraries are. This spring the course ”Statistics for advocacy” was translated into Norwegian and held in my county As leader of ”Samstat”, a library organization to advocate for better library statistics. We work towards the national bodies that collect library statistics, The National library and SSB (engelsk...) This fall a group of library leaders come together to form a community of statistics. The aim is to improve the use of statistics and to use it more often in political and strategic processes.
The Buskerud bandits felt the need for some guidelines in norwegian although the previous speaker professors Pors has been guiding norwegian librarians for many years on weeding and collection development The norwegin version of CREW is from this fall on the curriculum of the norwegian school of library and information management. The guidelines are of course of importance internally in the libraries, but it is also a very useful tool for better advocacy for why we weed towards the public, owners and politicians. The guidelines is allready in use in libraries in Norway. Few Norwegian libraries have a plan for collection development, and CREW serv as an inspiration to make one.
We need more space for learning, gaming, conversations meetings and other activities The picture is from a school library after a complete make-over. First we did an extensive weeding, then we furnished the library with new furntiure from IKEA
I've become a traveller in weeding and collection development In my course I talk about : - The Buskerud bandits experiences - Different methods for weeding - Importance of weeding
Our high profile on different social media got us press coverage, not only from the local press where the weeding stunts took place but also from national news papers. Especially one journalist has given us a hard time about weeding. In principle he is all against weeding. Our arguments is of no importance to him, but still give us a chance to front the importance of collection development to a bigger audience. ALL PR ARE GOOD PR Recently there also was a national debate provoced by an Norwegian author. He opposes all change in libraries, and sees reading as the one true goal for the libraries.
I established a blog in May twentyten 2010 It was modelled after ”Awfullibrarybooks” in USA Weeding with a smile! About the picture: This is a wonderful book from the 70' about taking care of your feet. Do you all se that it is a man and a woman?
Buskerud County Library hope to establish at least two communities, one on weeding and one on statistics In our stunts we try to involve as many librarians as possible, preferebly from other libraries as well. We seek to achieve maximal learnig effect from our stunts, and our experience is that learning by doing is the best way
As for Buskerud County we see a small change from a positive accession rate to a negative accession rate in the book collections since 2007
Since the start of the programme all the books have been distributed as gifts to the public libraries, and since the late 1980’s also to 550 libraries in primary schools. This public purchase programme benefits the publishers, authors, libraries and readers, although in different ways. Many libraries experience that many of these books are just filling up their libraries without ever being read. In difficult economic times with little money to buy material, the collections rely to heavily on the purchasing programme with loaners finding little else on the shelves.
The chart made by Tord Høivik at the Oslo University College give a good description of how reliant small libraries are of the purchasing programme. For libraries with two or fewer employees the procentage of accessions from the purchasing programme is almost 70. With decreasing budgets the libraries get more and more alike in their collections of books.
This case show that a local initiativ can achieve national impact Decreased focus on the artifacts to a higher focus on library space, services and how we best can assist our members Get attention from outside the library world Lots of different activities and initiativ over time do make a difference