Collection Management

1. Collection
Management
to
Support
Learning
Presentors:
Damaso, Annabelle
Malones, Mylene
Tansiongco, Kevin Conrad
Torres, Mark Joseph

2. Introduction
• Students judge the quality of a library by the
extent to which it supports their learning
resource requirements during the course of
their studies.
• Adequate access to library facilities (in terms
of both time and location); adequate
resourcing of libraries to cater needs of
students and teaching staff; and adequate
staffing and information technology facilities,
were all highlighted by the study to support
their learning's.

3. Introduction
• The strategies which are adopted to meet
student expectations depend on
organizational contingency factors, and no
ideal solutions can be prescribed: each
organization should, through informed
judgements, find its own answers.

4. Undergraduate and Post Graduate
Needs
• The concept of collection management to
support learning goes beyond the availability
of material.
• It includes the structure of loan periods,
borrowing entitlements, the amount and
location of study space, access to help and
advice, opening hours, library layout, guiding
and remote access.

5. Undergraduate and Post Graduate
Needs
• The availability of word processing,
spreadsheet, and computer-assisted learning
packages may also be important.
• In order to support student learning, the
collection should reflect back to students the
range of learning outcomes which have been
specified in the courses study.

6. Undergraduate and Post Graduate
Needs
• Thus material on reading lists should be
available, as should a suitable range of
resources to support research for
assignments.
• Students should also have the opportunity to
learn and to develop skills in completing self-
directed study elements of courses.

7. Undergraduate and Post Graduate
Needs
• The library must be fully involved in the
academic process at all levels.
• Senior library staff must be able to represent
the library’s interest and concerns to the
senior managers of the university, and
highlight the impact of any changes in
teaching and learning practice.

8. Undergraduate and Post Graduate
Needs
• Customer feedback should be used to identify
other areas of concern.
• The library should be able to interpret
institutional pedagogic goals, and probably
those of individual faculties, schools and
departments.
• Librarians are very effective in analysing user
needs and separating needs and wants, it can
be easy to focus on only part of the picture.

9. Partnership with Academic Staff
• Effective support for learning requires a
partnership between academic staff and the
library.
• It is essential to establish a clear sense of the
extent and nature of provision, so that
guidelines can be drawn up and mutual
understanding develops.

10. Supporting Teaching and Research
• Developments in teaching methods have
intensified the use of journals and
monographs for teaching purposes, further
blurring such distinctions.
• This is particularly so in cases where such
material is used in projects and dissertations
in final year undergraduate or taught in
Master courses.

11. Quality Assessment
• It examine the students learning experience
and measure student achievement against the
aims and objectives set by the subject
provider.
• They address the wide range of influences
that shape the experiences and achievements
of students and include the full breadth of
teaching, learning and student assessment
activities.

12. Student Feedback
• Library managers must ensure that feedback
from students is gathered systematically and
used to inform the planning and management
process.
• The library and its activities are at the heart of
institutional activity, but they do not form the
only critical relationship in the university or
college.

13. Student Feedback
• As well as working to achieve partnership with
academic staff, librarians need to establish
links with students and their representatives.
• This may done through consultation, focus
group, surveys and analysis of management
information.

14. Collection Management in a Mass
Higher Education System
• The student population is changing in many
ways. As well as the net expansion in numbers
and increased age range, the distribution of
students across different levels of course has
changed.
• Academic library managers and all staff who
are involved in collection management face
the problem of meeting demand from what
usually insufficient resource base.

15. Collection Management in a Mass
Higher Education System
• The concept of a perfect library – where
everything is available to every user when that
item is required – is changing. It is changing,
not merely in the sense of access vs. Holdings,
but towards planning structured access to
material.
• It focuses on the ideal of maximum
exploitation of resources.

16. Collection Management Principles
• Balance means that a range of needs can be
supported, from first-level assignment to
independent study and research.
• Scope is the way which one subject area is
studied within the institution may affect the
kind of material needed.
• Appropriateness may be measured in terms of
format, level, language and cost.

17. Collection Management Principles
• Access mechanisms such as structured loan
periods and the provision of multiple copies,
as well as wider issues of access to the service
and to its resources.

18. Quality in Collection Management
• The size of the collection is not the only
indicator of effectiveness in supporting
learning.
• There may be a correlation between high
expenditure on libraries and high student
achievement, but it is difficult to prove that
students get better results from better
libraries.

19. Quality in Collection Management
• The structure of quality assessment visits
implicitly accept that learning resources and
the management of the service may be more
important than numbers of books.
• The library must be committed to effective
and efficient resource management.

20. RELATIONSHIPS
• The collection management process relies on
a series of relationships.
• It may be helpful to consider who are the
other stakeholders.

21. Relationships with Library Users
• Relationships between the library and its
users benefit from transparent management
of services- so that and students understand,
for example, policy on the provision of
multiple copies. Users also appreciate swift
action by the library to purchase additional
stock in areas under heavy pressure- perhaps
by using contingency funds in the budget.

22. Relationships with Library Users
• User support is also important: the service at
information or enquiry desks, user education
and information skill training.

23. Relationships with other Institutions
• Links with other higher education institutions
are becoming increasingly important.
• Collaboration was recommended in the
Dearing report and has an increasingly
important position on the Chief Librarians
agenda.

24. Strategies for Diverse and Expanding
Populations
• Academic libraries must develop strategies to
deal with the increasingly diverse higher
education population.
• This may mean redefining their services and
facilities and the way they are made available
to their client groups.
• Longer opening hours mean higher potential
stock availability, but at a price on staffing and
operational overheads.

25. Strategies for Diverse and Expanding
Populations
• Increasing resource availability.
• Circulation policy to have differential
borrowing periods, depending on the mode of
study.
• Enhance levels of service.

26. Short Loan Collections
• It is an area where high-demand materials is
kept in a separate collection, either adjacent
to or behind the issue desk or counter.
• Photocopiers and some study space will also
be available nearby.
• Borrowing entitlements are lower than for the
main collections and there are usually higher
fines for the late return of material.

27. Short Loan Collections
• Short Loan Collections is in concept a device
for coping with and rationing demand for an
identified range of material.
• Open-access collections enable students to
fetch material from the shelves themselves
and either read it in the library, photocopy it
or take it to a special desk to be issued.

28. Electronic Solutions
• Items available in an electronic short loan
collection could be accessed by multiple users
at any one time.
• They could also be accessed through the
network, so students are not required to visit
the library in person.

29. Effectiveness of Short Loan
• Short loan may be a very specific function
which regulates access to textbooks; in other
places a larger collection which supports the
majority of taught course reading
requirements.
• Use of a SLC appears to be embedded into
undergraduate culture, and students need
very little persuasion to make any more use of
it.

30. Study Packs
• Is a collection of all or most of the key
readings required to support a course.
• May consist of journal articles, chapters from
books, exam questions and the lecturer’s own
material, all bound together and resold or
distributed to students.
• It is a tangible resource which requires no
special equipment to use, and which also
provides a guarantee of basic provision.

31. Reading Lists
• It forms the critical connection between
teaching and learning strategies in the library.
• Teaching staff compile reading lists either
based on what is already available in the
library or based n what is relevant to the
course they are teaching.

32. Circulation Policies
• Play an important role in managing access to
printed material.
• Loan periods.
• Borrower entitlement.
• Fines and suspension.
• Circulation policies may be determined by
library managers, but more usually result from
negotiations between the service and the
library or learning resources committee.

33. Management Information from Library
Systems
• To provide much quantitative data, since all
transactions are recorded.
• This data can be used to establish a clear
picture of demand and pressure.
• It also provide information which can be used
to assess the performance of the acquisitions
and cataloging processes.

34. Conclusion
An underlying theme is the importance of
the subject librarian. Within any academic
library there is an essential role for people
who can empathize with the needs of staff
and students and interpret their needs and
demands into service priorities and
deliverables.
Librarians are pragmatic people, who must
manage a real situation, as well as aspire
towards the ideal.