Email is the best way for students who are not often on campus to meet with me. I normally check my email several times per day during the work week and once a day (usually in the a.m.) on weekends and holidays. Normally, I can answer your queries within a few hours. There may be times when I am away from the computer for a day or so. I am normally away from campus on Thursday.
If you need course adaptations or accommodations because of a documented disability or if you have emergency information to share, please contact the Office of Disability Services at 865-974-6087. This will ensure that you are properly registered for services. It is also important to meet with the teacher to verify and discuss your situation.
Selecting and preserving a variety of items (tangible and intangible) to meet needs of particular users; community analysis; policies and procedures; evaluation; purchasing.
This course introduces the principles, philosophy, and practice of collection development and management to meet particular needs. The course--text [when used], lectures, and assignments--attempts to cover the most important aspects of collection development and management. The course deals with collections in a general sense rather than collections limited to a particular subject, format or agency. Examples will be taken from a variety of settings, but many will come from libraries where collection development and management tends to be more established and where the teacher has more experience. Please note that collections may contain items in almost any format.
While classroom activities will be somewhat general, assignments will involve the student with a specific community, agency, collection, subject and format.
The University requires that a full semester course include a minimum of 45 contact hours. Since we have scheduled the class meetings for twenty-five hours, we will need to add twenty hours of contact outside of class. We will do this via small group discussions using self-selected groups. Groups may range in size from two to six people.
Each class meeting will include a required discussion topic as seen below. You should plan on spending about an hour discussing this topic in a small group discussion using email, Blackboard or whatever. One member of your group will prepare a summary of your discussion responses which will be sent to the teacher using the Blackboard Drop Box. The discussion summary should be received by the teacher before 5.00 p.m. on the Friday after the topic has been covered in class. Discussion responses will be read with care and graded on a pass/fail basis.
You should plan on spending about 4 hours per week interacting with your colleagues and the teacher. While this seems to be a considerable amount of time, this ten week term will involve no more time than the usual fifteen-sixteen weeks in the fall and spring.
Since there will be about 25 hours of classroom time, some important topics will not be covered in the class. The following is a tentative schedule of topics to be covered in the course. The nature of the topic, the amount of class discussion, and the discovery of new material may result in changes. We may not cover all of the topics listed below.
Lecture notes for the topics covered in this class are available at the teacher's website and not on Blackboard. The notes are more extensive than the Power Point slides found on Blackboard or Centra. Please read the appropriate lecture notes before that topic is presented in class. Class room presentations assume that you are familiar with the lecture content and may NOT cover all of the important content from the notes. I may ask questions about topics in the lecture notes.
There is no final examination for this term.
Meeting One
14 January
Introduction
Concepts and Definitions
Discussion question: In the future, is "access management" a more accurate phrase for what collection developers and mangers will be doing?
Meeting Two
21 January
Concepts and Definitions
Assignment One due
Discussion question: A teen says "I don't need the library, it's too big, too complicated, and anyway, everything worth having is on the Internet." Your response?
Meeting Three
4 February
Reviews and reviewing
Outsourcing
Assignment two due
Discussion question: Studies have found that most purchasers use but a small number of review sources and tend to order the same items. How might you insure access to a more diverse selection of reviews and a more diverse collection?
Meeting Four
18 February
Importance
Selector
Value - Demand
Project parts 1 and 2 due
Discussion question: Is it reasonable to assume that if an item is very popular it must be of poor quality and vice versa?
Meeting Five
4 March
Community analysis
Discussion question: In the olden days, many information professionals assumed that their community was unique. Does "community uniqueness" make sense today?
Meeting Six
18 March
Policies
Acceptable use
Project parts 3 and 4 due
Discussion question: To what degree should employees be allowed to use the Internet for personal needs while at work? For example, should employees on break time be allowed to visit a hobby oriented WWW site or check on the performance of a stock or order a book from Amazon.com?
Meeting Seven
25 March
Collection evaluation
Weeding
Discussion question: How might you demonstrate that collections benefit the community? That these collections represent a good return on investment (ROI)?
Meeting Eight
8 April
Financial resources
Project parts 5 and 6 due
Discussion question: What steps might you take to raise money for collection development when normal funding is reduced?
Meeting Nine
15 April
Resource-sharing
Project parts 7 and 8 due
Discussion question: Discussion question: How important are distant collections for those you serve? Does resource-sharing make sense for your users?
Meeting Ten
22 April
Complaint Handling
Final Meeting
Discussion question: A noted library science educator has said that one sign of a diverse collection is one that contains material that information professionals find objectionable. Does this seem reasonable?
When you complete this course, you should be able to:
This is primarily a lecture course. However, lectures are interruptible and appropriate questions likely to interest the class are encouraged. Prepare yourself for the subjects which will be discussed in class by doing the appropriate reading. Review the lecture notes. Think about issues raised and relate them to your own experience.
Only a few topics can be covered in class. Much of what you learn will come from the time, effort, and thought given to the assignments. Class time is used to introduce the student to general concerns, problems, and trends. Since class time will not provide the student with specific how to do it information relating to assignments, students should discuss particular concerns, questions about the assignments or problems with the teacher outside of class.
Class attendance is not required. However, failure to attend class and participate in class discussions will be considered in the student's final grade, especially if performance on assignments is marginal.
The teacher will post a note on the UTKSIS-L discussion list if he is unable to meet with the class.
All written work must be word processed and double spaced. Please use at least a 11 point font. Your name and email address should be on the title page or in a header on the first page of content. Turabian is the official SIS style manual.
All written work for distance education students must be sent to the teacher via the BlackBoard DropBox. Knoxville students may use the DropBox or deliver the paper to the classroom. Text must be in RTF or MS Word DOC formats. Papers are late if received after 11.59 on the assigned date. Papers will not be returned, but comment will be sent to students via email.
Each of the following assignments may be done by an individual or a team of no more than two students. Teams are self-selected. Each team assignment should close with a brief statement indicating what each student contributed to the assignment.
1. The first evaluation exercise (100 points) requires you to identify an item of your choice [select an item of personal or professional interest] that has received at least three reasonably substantial reviews [more are better]. An announcement is not a review. Please answer these questions:
I am looking for:
2. The second evaluation (100 points) requires you to answer ONE of the following questions. The purpose of this assignment is to demonstrate your ability to evaluate and select the best single item from a pool of items. Best for what and best for whom will be important in a thoughtful response. You will also need to briefly characterize the pool of available items and discuss your evaluation and selection process.
I am looking for:
3. Develop a collection on a reasonably sized subject using appropriate content. Items selected may be tangible or intangible. Any format is suitable. Living collections are certainly appropriate. Server-based collections are fine. Select a local organization or agency with a need for a professionally developed collection. Please be reasonable in any demands which you make on local contacts. Develop a collection in your subject or topic following the collection development process described on the separate process handout {this handout is available via my website}. Note that smaller subjects or topics usually work better than larger ones. Your chosen organization and subject must be approved by the teacher. This assignment is worth 650 points.
Late work may not be accepted. If accepted, late work without a convincing rationale will be given a letter grade penalty which will reduce the optimum grade to B.
Discussion before the due date may provide an extension without penalty.
Incomplete grades are given only in extraordinary circumstances. If you are aware of a problem likely to make it difficult to meet a course deadline, please contact the teacher as soon as possible. Rationale statements are less likely to be accepted after the deadline has passed.
Academic honesty is an integral part of graduate study. Cheating, plagiarism, and other acts of academic dishonesty will be dealt with severely as set forth in Hilltopics, the UTK student handbook. At the same time, it is also important to note it is normal for graduate students to help each other in a variety of ways while still being responsible for creating their own intellectual property and clearly indicating where they are in debt to others.
As an introductory course which should give you basic information about developing and managing collections, the course is not comprehensive. Important aspects of collection development and management will be mentioned only in passing. The course cannot tell you all that you need to know. Rather, you should leave the course with the feeling that you know enough to continue your education on your own. One short course cannot give you the collection development and management competencies necessary for a professional lifetime.
Class time will emphasize basic concerns. Students will be responsible for becoming familiar with a variety of finding aides and other sources on their own time. Note that use of a variety of appropriate sources is required for success with the project. The teacher may discuss appropriate sources with the student at a mutually convenient time.
Since there is much to do and time is limited, establish your own schedule and stick with it. Plan on completing the first assignments soon so that you have adequate time for the major selection project. Please note that the summer term is much more intensive than the fall or spring terms because there are one third fewer weeks.
Besides the specific assignment specifications mentioned above or on other course handouts, ALL written work will be evaluated according to the following criteria:
The following convention is used in evaluating student work:
We will not be using a text this term. However, if we did, The Responsive Public Library: How to Develop and Market a Winning Collection by Sharon L. Baker and Karen L. Wallace (Libraries Unlimited, 2nd edition, 2002) would be a good choice. Although the work is aimed at public libraries, the concepts and approaches are broadly applicable.
A more traditional choice would be the current edition of Developing Library and Information Center Collections by G. Edward Evans which covers more aspects of collection development and management.
An alternate title would be Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management by Peggy Johnson [ALA] which is current and has received good reviews.
Older texts for those interested in library collections are widely available {call numbers below are for the UTK Libraries but similar ones should be found in other LC classed collections} and include: Collection Management: Background and Principles by Wortman [Z689 .W787 1989]; Carter, Bonk and Magrill, Building Library Collections; Katz, Collection Development; Ranganathan, The Five Laws of Library Science [Z670 .R22 1963]; and Broadus, Selecting Materials for Libraries [Z689.B86]. Collection Development in Libraries [Z687 .C64] was a state of the art review which is dated but has many of the useful characteristics of a text.
Collection Management [Z687 .D42] is probably the most useful of those periodicals which regularly treat library collection development. Collection Building [Z687 .C] is another important title, but has become prohibitively expensive. Library Resources and Technical Services [Z671 .L717] publishes research articles on library collection development and acquisition work. Library Collections, Acquisitions & Technical Services [Z689 .L515] also contains worthwhile articles.
The best collection of links and documents for collection development and management librarians is at the University of Buffalo. You should become familiar with it. Another useful and comprehensive website for acquisitions and collection development is at Appalachian State University.The site now includes a directory of selected collection development policies on the WWW. The Arizona Public Libraries Training Site provides some helpful introductions. A glossary of acquisitions terms may be helpful.
The national on-line book stores, Amazon.com, being the best known, are often useful for current awareness, reviews, and bibliographic verification. The Librarians' Index to the Internet is often useful in locating information on professional topics.
Many of the several library and information science discussion groups on the Internet deal with CDM on an irregular basis, usually by subject or type of library. You may also want to check with your favorite discussion list index to check for lists that deal with highly focused collection development on a topic such as printing history or a format such as maps.
The American Library Association has two units devoted to collection development and management. The Resources Section of the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services [ALCTS], with its Collection Management and Development Committee, has traditionally been the association home for collection developers. Recently, the Reference and User Services Association has created a Collection Development and Evaluation Section. The degree to which these two sections cover the same scope is presently unclear. Ideally, the prospective library collection developer should belong to both.
***Please see the teacher if you have special needs, objectives, or problems
Last Major Revision: December 2005.
