Document Type

Presentation

Publication Date

11-2023

Abstract

At Clemson University, each subject librarian has a yearly goal to perform collection assessment and development duties as part of their work with their assigned departments; however, CU Libraries has been without a dedicated Collection Development and/or Management Librarian since prior to the pandemic. As a result, collection development, management, and assessment activities are somewhat piecemeal due to a lack of time, support, and staffing. After a library-wide reorganization in 2022, a 25% time position was created for an existing librarian to take on collection-related duties and start a formal collection assessment program with subject librarians. The Collections Sharing and Delivery Librarian, who manages the team in charge of interlibrary loan, document delivery, offsite storage, and library mail & delivery services, volunteered to take on these additional duties. Working with the subject librarians, who are divided into three teams based on their areas of focus (Humanities, Sciences, and Social Sciences), the group decided to pilot a 3 year assessment cycle. The goal of this project is to create a way for tasks in the area of collection development and assessment to be completed in a timely manner while not overwhelming each team of librarians who are also juggling teaching, research, reference, and service work. As proposed, each year one of the teams would take on one of three different collections-related tasks: physical collections assessment (involving weeding and transferring lesser-used materials to offsite storage), e-resources assessment (involving analyzing usage and investigating other available content), and patron assessment (involving communication with patrons in librarians’ assigned departments to determine satisfaction and needs). Through rotating tasks each year, the three teams will have covered all of the three assessment areas in three years, from 2023 to 2026.

Comments

Presented at Charleston Conference 2023, November 6-10 in Charleston, S.C.

Download

Share

COinS