Sam Demas

Rethinking Collection Management Plans: Shaping Collective Collections for the 21st Century

The emergence of shared print repositories has created new opportunities for libraries to provide cost-effective stewardship through collaborative collection management. This opportunity also presents challenges, as libraries must reenvision collection management in the context of local, regional, and national priorities. In previous decades, collection management plans were used to communicate an institutions strategies for managing local collections. As libraries prepare to participate in cooperative agreements, formal collection management plans and policies can and should be used once again as a practical framework for decision making. The authors offer practical advice on developing a collection management plan in a collaborative context.

Curating Collective Collections — Agriculture and Rural Life: A Discipline or Domain-Based Approach to Preservation and Access

Librarians in the field of agriculture advocated an approach to setting preservation priorities that raised the sights above the level of individual collections to systematically address the literature of entire disciplines. Their premise was that the universe of publishing is in fact scattered among many libraries and that much preservation work had already been done, and that this data could be cost-effectively pulled together with online catalogs and other bibliographic sources. Building on precedents in medicine, classics, theology, and other disciplines, 2

In unison with our communities and with each other: striving for excellence in college librarianship

Abstract: This chapter recounts the elements of a 10-year organizational self-improvement effort to reposition the Laurence McKinley Gould Library at Carleton College to better serve our community by adapting to innovations in our profession. The emphasis is not so much what we do and how we do it, but rather how we act in unison with our community and with each other, and the extent to which collaboration is a value that permeates the organization. Excellence in academic librarianship manifests itself at Carleton through: (1) the commitment by the whole team to strive for superb service across the board, supporting each other in providing a well-balanced set of services that is notable for its consistency and overall excellence; (2) the approach we have taken both as individuals and as a total organization to develop partnerships and collaborations that ensure that our efforts are carefully tailored to the needs and integrated into the fabric of the College; and (3) our emphasis on community building, campus leadership on library issues, and on orchestrating myriad ways to support learning and teaching.