[LIBRARYDIR] Survey: Marketing Your Collections

Mon Jun 24 10:55:31 PDT 2019

Greg,

One of the thigs I've seen firsthand is that in situations where the library isn't funded adequately to provide materials for students, instruction faculty start developing course assignments (and entire courses) that don't make use of library resources whatsoever. This turns into a vicious cycle-instruction faculty don't require students to use the library because the library doesn't have adequate resources for their class; falling use of materials makes it harder for the library to argue for funding, which means fewer resources, which means instruction faculty don't send their students to the library...

Kirsti S. Thomas
Library Technical Service Manager
Seattle Colleges
kirsti.thomas at seattlecolleges.edu

From: LIBRARYDIR <librarydir-bounces at lists.ctc.edu> On Behalf Of Bem, Greg via LIBRARYDIR
Sent: Monday, June 10, 2019 18:10
To: WACTC Library Directors <librarydir at lists.ctc.edu>
Cc: Bem, Greg <Greg.Bem at lwtech.edu>
Subject: Re: [LIBRARYDIR] Survey: Marketing Your Collections

Hello all,

I'm sure some of you read this already, but in today's digest The Chronicle included an op-ed from a librarian at Bowling Green Amy Fry, who wrote "The Vast Dismantling of Library Infrastructure."<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.chronicle.com%2Fblogs%2Fletters%2Fthe-vast-dismantling-of-library-infrastructure%2F%3Futm_source%3Dcr%26utm_medium%3Den%26cid%3Dcr&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cb7209d17358e4813d43d08d6ee0991ff%7C02d8ff38d7114e31a9156cb5cff788df%7C0%7C0%7C636958122217124413&sdata=nsETurG5At4AkRToRDJ9eRqDLZTNDX9lgbnYeRgZuZ4%3D&reserved=0> Please email me if you need access (I believe this piece is freely available though).

Pertinent to the inspiration that resulted in the survey below in this email thread, Amy Fry's points regard the interpretation of falling circulation rates:

Administrators will argue that print library circulation is falling. Print circulation is falling because the titles most likely to circulate are the newest, and there are fewer and fewer new books available in academic libraries for an ever-increasing number of potential users. Rate of use for the print books BGSU does buy is high - 71% according to my last study (as opposed to 20% for our ebooks) - we are just not buying enough of them.

Faculty have mostly failed to notice, and I think administrators have mostly hoped that they won't. Librarians are told to keep collection cuts quiet, or spin them as advantageous somehow. Library administrators have hired consultants to convince us to shrink the collection footprint, overlooking the obvious eventuality that, as new purchases dwindle and older titles are weeded, that footprint will handily shrink on its own. Vendors gobble more and more of our budget providing digital content we will never own, and inflation alone grows by more than half what we used to spend on monographs every single year.

Meanwhile, I keep trying to help students find the information they need - often in books - that will help them formulate the research questions Messer-Kruse wants them to ask. We don't have them. More and more, our partners in our statewide consortium don't have them, either (or have them as locally purchased ebooks, which are not included in our statewide catalog because they cannot be borrowed, making them undiscoverable if that's where you're looking). And once library catalogs no longer have them, Google, and its chaos, and its algorithms, and its ads, is all I will have to offer those students, because, no matter how carefully libraries catalog, if we are not adding the content to our collections that the majority of our students and researchers need to use, there will be nothing there for them to find.

This is something I plan on discussing at length with my team in the context of our collection development strategies.

Greg Bem, MLIS
Professor and Library Coordinator
Library Learning Commons
Lake Washington Institute of Technology
Pronouns: he/him/his

Contact Info
greg.bem at lwtech.edu<mailto:greg.bem at lwtech.edu%0d>
425-739-8100 xt.8898
http://www.lwtech.edu/campus-life/library<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lwtech.edu%2Fcampus-life%2Flibrary&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cb7209d17358e4813d43d08d6ee0991ff%7C02d8ff38d7114e31a9156cb5cff788df%7C0%7C0%7C636958122217134421&sdata=6J5%2FFPPJojRXiTanQ5gK6lB2RXPqLKNPWRADFSH2k6s%3D&reserved=0>

From: LIBRARYDIR [mailto:librarydir-bounces at lists.ctc.edu] On Behalf Of Bem, Greg via LIBRARYDIR
Sent: Monday, May 13, 2019 6:06 PM
To: WACTC Library Directors <librarydir at lists.ctc.edu<mailto:librarydir at lists.ctc.edu>>
Cc: Bem, Greg <Greg.Bem at lwtech.edu<mailto:Greg.Bem at lwtech.edu>>
Subject: [LIBRARYDIR] Survey: Marketing Your Collections

Hey all,

Thanks to those who participated in the two recent survey forms. You're all welcome to go look at the results within the Surveys folder of the LLC Team Drive. Those who didn't fill out the Community Borrowers survey and still want to can do so here<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2Fforms%2Fd%2Fe%2F1FAIpQLSch-eknbjRQrJzcSVH_N77MN47FcdcEifNzrJVZfeVJeLnyJw%2Fviewform%3Fusp%3Dsf_link&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cb7209d17358e4813d43d08d6ee0991ff%7C02d8ff38d7114e31a9156cb5cff788df%7C0%7C0%7C636958122217144424&sdata=yUvtiHJraygOnboY%2BmciF97r2TKPNLHHnQH6idyDZvE%3D&reserved=0>.

But on to new things!

Here is a new survey<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2Fforms%2Fd%2Fe%2F1FAIpQLSefkwqMqdknKSrskdXWKq2QhXDzMjjCZ3Sz0WKMFdWK2vjV4A%2Fviewform%3Fusp%3Dsf_link&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cb7209d17358e4813d43d08d6ee0991ff%7C02d8ff38d7114e31a9156cb5cff788df%7C0%7C0%7C636958122217144424&sdata=UFLuRq%2FYEJ4IAFE2ZeGwwyiJqJEZLm05HE%2Fv02VjSBM%3D&reserved=0>, which (hopefully) is straightforward and has the potential to be very informative while not taking much time to complete. It is about marketing collections, and is based off a conversation that was had at the last LLC meeting regarding physical item circulation decreasing at some libraries.

Thanks to those who contribute :)

Greg

Greg Bem, MLIS
Professor and Library Coordinator
Pronouns: he/him/his

Contact Info
greg.bem at lwtech.edu<mailto:greg.bem at lwtech.edu%0d>
425-739-8100 xt.8898
http://www.lwtech.edu/campus-life/library<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lwtech.edu%2Fcampus-life%2Flibrary&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cb7209d17358e4813d43d08d6ee0991ff%7C02d8ff38d7114e31a9156cb5cff788df%7C0%7C0%7C636958122217154432&sdata=QcxLFyz0SASyAKON5DnnhxzudC8Zu1XDiYMfC9vQbXw%3D&reserved=0>

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