Libraries are beginning to "right size" their legacy print collections and rely increasingly on shared collections. Most have at least rudimentary guidelines for weeding and transfer to storage. But the "dirty little secret" is that very few libraries have an overarching strategy and coherent plan that articulate exactly how the collections will be managed, how they will engage their communities in this process, and how it will ultimately benefit those for whom we steward the collections. This emphasis on the short-term tactical and not the long term strategic dimensions of collection management, and concomitant the tendency to keep the overall plan, to the extent it exists, a secret from faculty and students, eventually gets many libraries in trouble.
Join us on a mission to help libraries develop formal written collection management plans that explain how, what, when, where, and why they are managing their legacy collections and why it will benefit users. Such plans are not only procedural and policy, but political in purpose. Bring your own bits and pieces of a plan, along with your questions, stories, worries and ideas to discuss with a panel of collection managers who are in various stages of preparing coherent collection management plans for a university library, a college library, and a consortium of 18 college libraries. You will leave this session with strategies for responsibly performing your stewardship role, to communicate what you are doing, and to situate your local collection management efforts in the context of regional and national shared print programs.
