Library collection management is a major aspect of information resources.  Patrons come to the library for the most current, reliable, and appropraite materials, so librarians must understand the patrons who use the library.  Librarians make decisons on purchasing materials, inventory, and the policies and procedures of their library.  Preservation, inter-library loans, and weeding a collection are all tasks support the information resources competency of librarianship.

One of my best online resources for students is through Cengage Learning.  The Gale databases are the most frequently used resources when the students begin their research, and one of the reasons that they are so great is because they are constantly being updated with new information. This is important for the concepts and issues related to the lifecycle of recorded knowledge from creation through various stages of use.  Twin Valley subscribes to Gale E-Books as well as six of the "in-context" databases. Within the search limiters, students can also narrow down their searches by dates of materials. If an article is too outdated, they can easily remove that from their search to get more relevant information.  Included is a presentation from LIB 526 about why Gale is a great technology tool for any library media center. 

While I was taking LIB 555 and LIB 515, I was in the process of revitalizing my library.  These were both summer courses for me, so I did my fieldwork in one document and extended it over the summer.  In this fieldwork journal, I have the timeline of proposing the weeding process to my administration, running circulation reports, choosing which books to weed, and then what to do with the weeded books.  The Twin Valley Library was running out of usable space for relevant books and technology, so a major weed was needed. This shows the issues related to the lifecycle of recorded knowledge.  

In any library, collection development starts with understanding the needs of patrons and what is in your current collection. Among the many other tasks to keep up with, it is important to know your resources and what areas of the library need to be enhanced, weeded, or changed. We use Junior Library Guild at Twin Valley as our major sales representative for books and audio books.  They are a great company because they send books in categories of my choice each month, and librarians can monitor what is coming.  If a book is scheduled to come that is already in your collection, it can be swapped for another title. Junior Library Guild makes great choices according to what my library needs. 

In the Library Collection class in Kutztown's MLS program, there were many discussion topics presented in the class.  Attached is all of my discussion responses with a highlighted section specifically about collection developtment from Twin Valley.  There are sections about selection tools, acquisitions, budget, and cooperative collection agreements with other libraries in this document of disscussion posts. 

The sections in my library seem to be constantly changing because I'm trying to keep up with new library trends.  In 2015, I genrefied the fiction section and pulled some books out of the non-fiction to make displays.  One section that I wanted to highlight was the biography/memoir section (921) because a lot of classes had assignments that required students to read or reseach about a person. In this Core Assignment from LIB 515, I proposed adding to my 921 section.  This document includes bibliographic information for titles that I wished to add to my collection, price, selection and review tools for choosing the titles, and finally a rationale for how that title could benefit the 921 section of my library.

The students of Twin Valley are really enjoying the fiction section being categorized into genres. My avid readers can go to the genres they enjoy and find an abundance of titles for them.  My students who do not particularly like to read can go to the genres that they are most interested in, and they have a better chance of finding a book that they can at least tolerate.  The process of genrefying was a long and tedious one, but in the end it was worth it.  Attached is a picture of the spine labels for one of my sections.  Every book in the fiction collection got a new spine label in the spring and summer of 2015. 

The Twin Valley High School library does not have a collection policy, but I will make it a goal of mine to create one with my administration.  In LIB 515, I found the Denver Public Library’s collection development policy that was updated in April of 2014, and I used this to complete an analysis of their Collection Development policy.  Attached is the analysis of their policy and my ideas about making my own.

When I took over the library in 2014, I had a lot of organizing to do.  I found a collection of 'rare' books hidden away in a back office.  I decided to put them on display for students and teachers to see, but I need to look more into how to properly preserve them.  This is a new display, and I will be looking into getting a case to put them in rather than just having them out.  I am also going to make signs for them to label them as rare books and direct students to ask for assistance if they are interested in seeing them.  One of the oldest books I have was published in 1896.  It's called The Lady's Book and is all about how women should act, dress, and speak. The picture to the left is an artifact from that book.

Finally, one of the processes for beginning the weeding process for me involved running a report in Destiny that gave me the titles with zero circulations since 1990.  As crazy as it might seem, it was a very long list.  I didn't weed all of the titles from this list- I went through and evaluated every book before deciding.  Many of the books on the list still had relevance or were books that were mostly used in the library.  Many of them were put on display shelves where they could be accessed easier or more attention could be brought to them.  A copy of my circulation report with zero titles is attached.