Friday, December 4, 2009

Library Collection Development: Earning a Place on the Shelves

Link to December 4 Cedar Rapids Gazette article, "Library director plans to improve operations, circulation".

Excerpt: Pasicznyuk wants to increase circulation by 10 percent, so that 35 percent of the library’s materials are checked out on a given day.

“If more of our collection is in the hands of people, we can have a larger collection, because we don’t have to store it all,” he said.

Books that don’t get checked out will be dropped from the collection, he said, and popular books will be marketed better. Cookbooks, home improvement books and other popular items will be displayed prominently, sometimes on outward-facing shelves, he said.

“Something has to earn its place on our shelf,” he said. “I know a lot of people get antsy when you talk about weeding a library, but I can tell you the most effective libraries do it constantly.”

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