This week's guest speaker

Last Tuesday we had a guest speaker (Karen Lowe) who spoke to the class about collection development. She mainly talked about how to develop a five-year plan to update the materials on your shelf. I learned a great deal from her and it seems like the only logical plan for librarians on a tight budget. However, I did feel somewhat lost as she discussed the categories of the Dewey Decimal System. I don't know how I'll ever learn all those categories. Also, how can you judge what category a book will belong to without reading it (just by looking at its cover)? I guess that's where the annotations and reviews come in when you are reordering. The process for weeding and replacing materials that she mentioned really didn't seem too tough. Parts of it did seem somewhat tedious, but not so overwhelming anymore. I really feel like I learned a lot about how a library is run!

Creating an annotated selection tool list...

Last week we started looking at various selection tools for building library collections. I didn't know there were such publications out there. I also didn't realize how specific and specialized some of them were. Some were very helpful and others were not of much use to me. I looked at one book that was limited to American history for senior high school students. While this was an excellent resource for the particular audience it served, it was very narrow in scope. I'm looking forward to finding out more about the online journals and other publications that also serve as selection tools. We are required to locate 10 and evaluate them before next class. This project will definitely be a useful resource to me when I begin to build my own collection and select my own materials.

Selection Tools Project

I really enjoyed the guest speaker in class tonight. I really gained some insight as to how a public library is run. It sounds like such a great job. I would love to have the responsibility of developing a collection for the library. I am also considering possibly getting my MLS in public libraries as well as school libraries. It is only one class and it would open many more doors for me. I am looking forward to evaluating some of the tools that are used to help librarians select materials for the library. The skills I am learning in this class will be useful to me in the field. Nina made the selection of materials seem easy, especially with all the resources that actually annotate, review, and even show the cover of the book. These databases even show what all she had purchased in the past. It was also interesting to learn that Wal-Mart has the best prices on most DVDs and movies. I know that I may have only certain sources that I can order from when purchasing for the school library. I liked the fact that you could get away with ordering more diverse materials if you worked in a public library. I do not like the hours, however. I believe I do want to stick to school libraries, even though the pay is not as great. Once I research and create my annotated list of selection tools, I'll post which ones I found to be the best!