Team challenge for MLIS students in a collection development course with a high school or public library young adult fiction collection. How should you decide what to acquire? Through which sources? What criteria should you use to weed out books? How should you determine how much of your total resource budget is dedicated to this section?

1. Acquisitions, Weeding,
Donations and
Budgeting
IS 430 (UCLA)
Sarah Clark
Monday, October 28, 2013

2. Overview of Today
1. Hands on Collection Work (60 min)
2. Group-led discussion of readings (30 min)
3. Guest Speaker: Dudee Chiang from Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (70-90 min)
4. Closing

3. Case: School (or Public) Library
Teen Fiction Collection
photo credit: Flickr @prettybooks

4. Case: School or Public Library Teen
Fiction Collection
Goals of this teen fiction collection:
1. Maintain a high-use collection of popular
and classic works of fiction ranging from
young adult to adult books.
2. Keep a small but current collection that is
weeded regularly based on age, use, and
condition.
3. Represent diverse experiences and points
of view.

5. Click the image to go to the
document… Fiction Circulation Stats

6. A few problems with circ stats
● When you move to
a new ILS, are
stats preserved?
● What happens
when a book is lost
and replaced?
● Does in-library use
count as a
circulation?
● Caveats at this
library: when a
book is accidentally
checked in twice, it
is sometimes
counted as an inlibrary use.

7. Click the image to go to the document…
Usage and Acquisition Stats

8. Acquisitions
Team
What will you collect for this fiction section?

9. Acquisitions Team
● How will you decide what to buy? Which
reviewing sources might you use?
● How will you get to know your core set of
readers? Develop a plan for getting to know
your readers, their tastes. How might you
involve them in collection decisions?
● Identify a few titles we might consider adding
to the collection. How did you decide what to
add?

10. Budget Team
How will you budget for this fiction section?

11. Budget Team
You have $10,000 to spend per year on books.
Analyze the data you have.
● What information might you use to help you
decide how to allocate your money?
● What information is missing or needs
reorganizing?
● What criteria should determine how you
allocate your spendings?
● How much of the annual budget should be
spent on fiction?

12. Donations,
Weeding and
Challenges
Team
What will you decide what to keep, get rid of,
and accept for this fiction section?

13. Donations, Weeding and
Challenges Team
● What criteria will you use to assess whether or not to
take a donation for the fiction section? What is the most
important information to communicate to donors or
potential donors?
● What criteria will you use to weed the collection?
● Identify a couple items we should weed from the
collection. Why should they go?
● Your collection serves teens from 12-18 years old, and
parents might not like some of the items in your fiction
collection. How do you plan to deal with any challenges
to the items in your collection?