The Information Specialist's Scoop

Shaunna Mireau:

"I attended an excellent session on collection development for law libraries at the Canadian Association of Law Libraries Conference last week."

 

"Collection development symposium – audience suggestions:

- Continuous need for re-evaluating your collection, talking to your users and finding out their requirements.
- Resource sharing agreements and relationships. Look to work together with different library units. Divide up responsibility for different topics.
- Negotiate for the portion of the content you want (commentary/analysis).
- Work with the publishers on bundling of the electronic commentary on their sites with pricing and licensing that works for the users.
- Consortia and interlibrary loans.
- Visit vendor booths and give feedback. Request bound formats – talk to authors.
- Needs assessments – feedback from front-line librarians.
- Get your library community involved. Building of relationships and review of collection.
- Communicate and build trust with the vendors.
- Collaboration with other library communities.
- Collection usage statistics are key.
I- mplementing rotational cancellation of loose-leaf services."

Via Karen du Toit