[Publib] RE: Centralizing collection development

Sun Jul 5 18:55:00 EDT 2009

This is a long one folks...so go to the bathroom and grab your snacks now...  :)

I have worked in the centralized selection department at two different systems that have centralized selection.  At both of them we had centralized and discretionary funds (funds the unit librarians used to buy replacements or titles that were not purchased centrally for the unit).  

As for the fund set up:
at one location we took several items "off the top" and these funds were systemwide and were NOT broken down by branch/unit.  These funds were Popular DVDs, Popular CDs, Bestsellers, and patron requests.  The discretionary funds were broken down by unit and then further divided into adult and youth.  Some locations requested to have the YA and AV discretionary funds pulled out as separate funds and we did that for them.  Each unit also had a mass market paperback fund.  At this system we did not select mass market paperbacks centrally.  They were all selected by the public service librarians at the branchs/units.  Our centralized funds were divided up by branch/unit and then into various formats/genres ie adult fiction, adult nonfiction, music cds, dvds, juvenile fiction, picturebooks, juvenile AV, etc.

I selected juvenile AV and adult music CDs for that system.  I also coordinated all of the discretionary ordering.  For the pop cd fund which was not tied to any unit I used circulation figures and knowledge of the community to determine how many copies of a title I would put at one location (or if a location would even get the title).  I do not know how the selector for the print bestsellers determined her distributions.

At the system I work for now I select the adult print nonfiction and the adult spanish material.  We have discretionary and centralized funds.  The discretionary funds are broken down by branch/unit and then into adult, juvenile and just recently young adult.  The centralized funds are broken down by branch and unit.  We have adult and juvenile AV, bestseller, adult and juvenile massmarket paperback, adult and juvenile nonfiction, young adult, juvenile fiction, picturebooks, spanish adult material, etc.

This makes for A LOT of funds to keep track up but the fact that the funds keep track of how your purchasing is distributed amongst the branches/units makes up for the initial time spent in setting up the funds.  By having the funds split out it makes it easily for us to pull together stats for council members when they want to know how much was spent in their district or when we have to let our foundation know how much we spent on nonfiction in a fiscal year.   

We do not use any type of formula to determine how many copies of a bestseller to purchase or how to distribute them amongst the branches/units.  Our adult fiction selector uses prior circulation figures for that author, press/media hype, and print run among other things to decide the number of copies to buy.  I have at times used a formula to decide how many copies to buy (1 copy for every 10K in the print run) but I tend to buy fewer than that.  It is a formula the nonfiction selector used at my former employer which was a larger system than where I work now.

At both systems, we had selectors assigned by age level and then fiction or nonfiction.

we had one selector for juvenile and young adult print material; one selector for popular DVDs, adult fiction, bestsellers, adult audiobooks; one selector for adult nonfiction (both print and DVDs) and all patron requests; and one selector for juvenile AV, adult music CDs and Spanish materials who also coordinated the discretionary ordering.

Where I work currently we have one selector for all juvenile and young adult material (all formats); one selector for adult nonfiction print and adult spanish material (all formats); one selector for adult fiction, all adult AV (DVDs, CDs, audiobooks on cd and downloadable audiobooks), and bestsellers (fiction and nonfiction).  Eash selector handles patron requests according to their selection assignments.  Each selector oversees the discretionary lists that coorespond to their selection assignments.

Since all of our funds are broken out by branch this really determines how many copies and titles are purchased for a location.  We do have a rather complex method of distributing the budget;  We have a base amount to which we add an amount that is based on circulation and an amount that is based on square footage.  These amounts are distributed amongst the various formats in different ways.  The circulation funds are distributed based on the unit's percentage of the system circulation and the square footage funds are distributed based on the format's percentage of the branch's circulation.  We also did some indexing based on the price of material this past year.  

If you have any other questions or want any of this explained more....it even confuses us at times, please feel free to email me off list.  I will be out of the office from July 8-July 14 (going to ALA--yeah!).

Kathryn King
Adult Materials Selector
Fort Worth Library
500 W 3rd St
Fort Worth, TX 76102

kathryn.king at fortworthlibrary.org
817.871.8089

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Message: 8
Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2009 14:31:00 -0700 (PDT)
From: Rose Frase <pivotgeek at yahoo.com>
Subject: [Publib] Re: Centralizing Collection Development
To: publib at webjunction.org
Cc: Rose Frase <pivotgeek at yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <450712.46040.qm at web110005.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

My library system has been doing centralized collection development since the 1980s. They have separate funds for nonprint, reference, databases, adult fiction, periodicals, children's and young adult materials. At first, they used formulas for how many copies different branches would receive at various buying levels (blockbuster status, mid-level author, etc.) These formulas were created from knowledge of the communities for each branch. Now that our library system has a floating collection, it's the total number of copies purchased for the system that matters, not how many copies a branch originally receives.?
The selection staff in Collection Development are assigned material by format, genre, and/or age level. For example, one selector may purchase all music CDs, reference, and all 300s. If you'd like more information, our Coordinator of Collection Development is Lila Wisotzki (410-887-6137, lwisotzk at bcpl.net).
Rose Frase

Assistant Library Manager

Perry Hall Branch

Baltimore County Public Library (MD)

rfrase at bcpl.net
Date: Sun, 28 Jun 2009 19:05:16 -0400
From: "Gair Helfrich" <ghelfrich at aclsys.org>
Subject: RE: [Publib] Centralizing Collection Development
To: "Maribel Piloto" <pilotom at mdpls.org>, <publib at webjunction.org>

And if you have branches what criteria do you use to determine how many copies of best sellers that each branch gests.

Thanks,

Gair
Gair Helfrich, MLS
Supervising Librarian
Information & Technical Services Manager
Atlantic County Library
40 Farragut Avenue
Mays Landing, NJ 08330
609-625-2776 ext. 6327? Fax: 609-625-8143
ghelfrich at aclsys.org

From:?publib-bounces at webjunction.org?on behalf of Maribel Piloto
Sent: Sat 6/27/2009 01:22 PM
To:?publib at webjunction.org
Subject: [Publib] Centralizing Collection Development

Hi All,

Those of you out there who are ordering your materials centrally, how are you doing it????Do you have staff responsible for a specific format or genre (dvds, fiction, young adults, etc.)????Do any of you have your library system divided into regions and staff selecting for an assigned region?? Do you use system budgets - one pot of money for fiction, another for videos, another for young adults, etc. - or do you break up budgets by branches?? If you don't break up budgets, how do you guarantee that every branch gets an appropriate piece of the pie?

Maribel Piloto
Collection Development Manager
Miami-Dade Public Library System
101? West Flagler St.
Miami, FL 33130
Tel. 305-375-5505? Fax 305-375-3048

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