Strategies for Keeping Your Collection Alive and Vibrant During Budget Cuts

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Strategies for Keeping Your Collection Alive and
Vibrant During Budget Cuts
An Infopeople Workshop Spring 2005

• Carolyn M. Myers
• carolynm_at_multcolib.org

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This Workshop Is Brought to You By the Infopeople
Project

• Infopeople is a federally-funded grant project
  supported by the California State Library. It
  provides a wide variety of training to California
  libraries. Infopeople workshops are offered
  around the state and are open registration on a
  first-come, first-served basis.
• For a complete list of workshops, and for other
  information about the Project, go to the
  Infopeople Web site at infopeople.org.

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Agenda

• Prepare for Cuts Before they Happen
• Making Cuts to the Collection Budget
• Continue Developing for the Future
• Ideas For Keeping Your Collection Vibrant

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Introductions

• Name
• Title
• Library
• Did you have to make cuts to your budget last
  year? What amount or percent?

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The Challenge of Cuts

• What problems have occurred in your community as
  a result of cuts you had to make?

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Prepare Ahead for Cuts

• Have a collection plan in place
• Know how your collection reflects your library
  purpose and policies
• Make use of documents such as
• Mission Statement
• Long Range Plan
• Collection Development Policy

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Mission Statement Extracts

• Multnomah County Library serves the peopleby
  providingmaterials to meet their informational,
  educational, cultural and recreational
  needsproviding people of all ages with access
  and guidance to information and collections that
  reflect all points of view.
• The Millar library facilitates Portland State
  Universitys mission of teaching and learning to
  enhance intellectual, social, cultural and
  economic life for undergraduates and professional
  programs relevant to metropolitan areas.

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Long Range Plan

• Sets direction
• Measurable goals and objectives

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Update and Write Policies and Procedures

• Use slack time to write policies on collection
  development, materials selection, or disaster
  recovery
• Analyze ordering, processing, workflow, and job
  descriptions
• Review policies and practices with staff

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Measures that Help Assess Your Collection
Development Policy

• Statistical reports
• Usage patterns
• Holdings
• Demographics
• Benchmarks

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What Statistics Do You Collect and How Do You Use
Them?
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Turnover Rates

• Are you familiar with turnover rates and their
  use as a tool for evaluating your collection?
• Turnover Circulation divided by holdings

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Analyze Your Collection

• Consider using some form of collection analysis,
  such as Conspectus or other formal process
• Two examples
• WorldCat Collection Analysis http//www.oclc.org/c
  ollectionanalysis
• Bowkers Book Analysis System http//www.BowkerSup
  port.com

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Understand The Place of the Collection

• Status and importance within the library
• Within the local political context
• Compared to national peer libraries

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Exercise 1

• Using Statistics

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Developing a Strategy for Making Cuts

• Who will make the decision
• What type of cuts will be made
• Decide on a process
• Communicate the rationale

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Who Decides?

• Your funding agency
• Your library director
• Executive committee
• Selection committee
• Yourself

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What is the Nature of the Cuts?

• One time
• Short duration
• Long term

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Decide How the CutsWill Be Made

• Request input and involve all concerned
• Develop guidelines to help staff who will make
  specific cuts
• Offer support to staff making the cuts
• consider a team leader or a person who can handle
  the documentation

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After the Cuts Have Been MadeCommunicate!

• Tell staff the specific cuts and give the reasons
  and rationale used
• Inform the public if appropriate
• If there is an implementation delay, remind the
  staff again about the cuts and the rationale
• Thank all staff for their hard work

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Exercise 2

• Handling Budget Cuts

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Document Cuts For Future Use

• List each cut, its magnitude, and the rationale
  behind it
• Make a file of memos sent
• Write down and make a file of anything useful
  you learned during the experience
• Record the impact of each cut on the collection

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Acknowledge Possible Benefits of Budget Cuts

• Provides rationale for shifting priorities to
  future needs
• Oversized and underused collections can be pruned
• Media no longer in use can be eliminated
• A Sacred Cow gift collection can be sacrificed

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What Sacred Cow Collection Should You Consider
Cutting in Your Library? Why?
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Temptations to Resist

• Dont stop weeding
• continue with your weeding criteria
• maintain your weeding schedule
• Resist cutting out popular materials
• Dont ignore new formats

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Focus on the Future of the Collection

• Treading Water means your collection is going
  nowhere
• Use the Mission Statement and Long Range Plan to
  guide decisions
• Dont be surprised at contention as values are
  examined in public

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Exercise 3

• Defending Collection Changes

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Keep the Collection Visible

• Issue an annual state of the collection report
• summarize what happened the prior year including
  items purchased, titles added, etc.
• summarize the year ahead, including of budget
  going to adults, children, reference,
  periodicals, spoken, DVDs, etc.
• remind people about any significant events
  planned for the collection

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How Do You Make the Collection at Your Library
Vibrant?
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Ideas for Keeping Your Collection Vibrant

• Allow materials to remain at the branch where
  they are returned
• staff and delivery time are saved
• the public enjoy seeing a wider range of titles
• Shorten the check out time for certain popular
  materials

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More Ideas for a Vibrant Collection

• Set up a rental collection for best sellers
• Issue a press release educating the public about
  circulation numbers for the most popular books
• Market your collection with regularly changing
  displays

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Maintain Visibility With Support Groups

• Plan presentations to
• Library Board
• Library Foundation
• Other groups?

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Do Something New Each Year with the Collection

• Decide what needs the most outside help
• Ask a support group for funding to get the target
  collection started
• Give the group a lot of publicity
• Thank them as explicitly as possible

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Seek Help From Local Businesses

• Encourage businesses to fund additions related to
  their area
• They may be able to provide programs tied to
  their collection enhancement area
• Follow good procedural guidelines so problems
  will be avoided

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Investigate Collaboration With a Local School

• They may see advantage in hiring your selection
  and technical service staff
• Collaboration results in added investment and
  publicity for your value to the community

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Appeal to Your Public for Help

• Ask them to donate paperbacks in good condition
• They could give subscriptions to their favorite
  magazine
• Set up a wish list of bestsellers at local
  bookstores or Amazon.com and ask the public to
  give them as gifts to the library

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Exercise 4

• Ways to Enhance the Librarys Importance in Your
  Community

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Thank You

• Please fill out your Evaluation Form