My apologies for taking so long to summarise for the list, I haven't
had a chance to look at the wide and varied stuff that people were
so good to send me yet, but my thanks to all of you once again.
For the most part I actually received copies of people's collection
development policies rather than tips or hints. Some people gave
me permission to pass on these policies and some of you have
requested that I send these on. As we aren't allowed to use
attachments on this mailgroup I will have to send the policies I have
been permitted to circulate by separate mail. I will circulate this
week to everyone who has already asked me and you can email
me if you wish me to include you. If anyone else would like to give
me permission to circulate what they sent to me just let me know!
Still with me?
I received the following hints and tips which I have made
anonymous. Apolgies for the length of this mail.
********************
MAIL #1
Currency is vital (if you can get as much as possible on standing
order,or get your bookseller to notify you of new editions that is
great)
Don't keep old editions of medical/health information Do you need
any "special collection" to assist your hospital with their
specialities? Use the "corecollections" series to assist with basic
acquisitions.
If you have psychiatric / psychological material then you are into a
different ball game as current is not necessarily best and there is a
lot of classic material that you should not throw away.
Weeding - You could reduce topical material to one copy after a
set number of years (2 to 3) eg. government
white papers, health department etc. No old editions. (Also don't
offer them to hospital departments) because of EBHC issues.
However you of someone is interested in the complaints / litigation
side of medicine they may be interested in your old editions
Journals - Key journals - keep 15 -20 years? Journals - Lightweight
eg. Health Service Journal - Keep 5 years
Newsletters - current year?
MAIL #2
It depends what you want to use a collection development policy
for.
Can be used as a handy form of self-defence or a useful checkpoint
for when deciding whether or not a subscription/purchase fits in
with the sort of libray you are.
My advice would be get your professional staff together, hand out
copies of the university's strategic plan and spend not more than
half an hour thrashing something out!
On weeding, we have a general policy of disposing of non-core
material after 15 years and core material after 25, unless there is
evidence that they are still being used. The harder decision for us
is how to relegate books from the comparatively small open access
space in the reading room to the basement stack. We use
students for the first pass through the collection, with a brief based
on age and recent usage -a brief which varies a bit according to
how much space we are trying to clear.
MAIL #3
1. Books older than 5 years, especially nursing books, are
consigned to File 13 unless they are a seminal text (e.g. Notes on
Nursing, Florence Nightingale). The reason for this is that the
nursing students tell us that their lecturers have instructed them
ONLY to use references from the last five years.
References earlier than this are discounted unless the students can
justify their use of it. ('That was the only book in the library' doesn't
hold water for them...!). This does cause a few problems as the
doctors and the nurses writing their dissertations need information
that can give
rather more of a historical perspective than the past five years.
2. Where a new edition of a book has come out and we know about
it (! - any suggestions anyone has for tracking this GRATEFULLY
received), the old edition is binned once the new one has been
received.
3. Where a book covers procedures that have changed dramatically
(e.g. treatment of epilepsy, some surgical procedures) we try to
replace it where practicable.
4. Where a book is obviously old and has not been issued very
much (we have some books that have never been borrowed once in
the last four years and several that have never been catalogued
since the library was moved), or where the specialism has
relocated to our neighbouring hospital, this might also mark the
item for 'File 13', following discussion with lecturers.
In terms of collection development, we try to follow these guidelines:
1. When purchasing new items there are three main areas we
concentrate on. Sources of new books are the Bookseller,
Blackwells and other catalogues, amazon, the Nursing
Standard/Nursing Times, suggestions from students and lecturers
(getting hold of reading lists has always been a problem for us),
and seeing what the BMA/RCN and other nursing/medical libraries
have added recently.
2. We also hold a multimedia collection, and it has been difficult to
locate new items for this.
3. We also try (!) to keep our DOH, RCN and other medical report
collections up to date, but this is easier said than done as they
keep walking off our shelves...
**************
Kind regards
Niamh
Niamh Lucey
Head of Library & Information Services
St Vincent's University Hospital
Elm Park, Dublin 4
Tel: + 353 1 209 4921
Fax: + 353 1 283 8123
Email: [log in to unmask]
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