(Originally published Jan 2009)
It’s never a good idea to make last minute collection
development (LMCD) a common practice. But with the end of the financial year
looming ahead of me and almost an entire budget to spend, LMDC was my only
choice.
Never having done this before, I had no idea where to
start. The former church librarian, however, was very helpful and gave me a
list of the library’s current collection, as well as a wish list of books she
hadn’t been able to find yet. I was also told that Christian fiction (romance
and adventure) as well as DVDs for children and seniors was the traditional
focus of all collection development. Whoa! Big red flag there!
I have had the opportunity to take a collection
development course that firstly, was for academic libraries and secondly, was
not very…inspiring. Let’s leave it at that. But the right side of my brain, the
librarian side, tells me that there are more people in the church than seniors
and 5 year olds. In fact, a church might have the most impressive demographic
that a librarian will ever work with in terms of age groups. Furthermore, I had
the haunting suspicion that this collection development rut was one designed
many years ago. Either way, this collection development plan was about to
receive its first makeover!
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