Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management

by Peggy Johnson

"In this updated revision, expert instructor and librarian Peggy Johnson addresses the art in controlling and updating your library's collection. Each chapter offers complete coverage of one aspect of collection development, including suggestions for further reading and a narrative case study exploring the issue. Discussions of the importance and logistics of electronic resources are integrated throughout the book." Johnson offers a comprehensive tour of this essential discipline and situates the fundamental ideas of collection development and management in historical and theoretical perspective, bringing this modern classic fully up to date.

Genres: Nonfiction, Library Science, Textbooks, School, Reference, Librarianship, Adult

424 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

"a collection is an accumulation of past decisions" *

if you don't see the beauty in that statement, you probably won't give a shit about this book.

people on goodreads.com don't seem to like this book very much. and i don't know if it is just because it is a textbook, and who but a total nerd would love a textbook, or if it is a genuine dislike for the information or layout or whatever. me, i like it, and i feel like i learned a lot from this class, and this is the first semester of grad school where i feel like both my classes have practical applications that make me excited about the book business again.

now, i have been running the fiction department at my store for about 10 years, and a lot of the material in here is stuff i have been doing already, without any guidance. but it is important stuff, if you are going to take book-matters seriously. the book takes the concept of a collection as a whole: building, protecting, managing, tracking usage, discarding; and goes into very clear detail about all of these aspects.if you do care about having a solid collection, there is some really useful information here. there is a bunch of basic shit, too, that you will probably pick up as you go along in the field, like i did, but having it all together in one book as a reference tool is helpful.

and of course, everything i know, i know from a bookstore perspective.libraries are completely different, so the parts about budgets and administration and bulk orders through vendors is all stuff i don't do now, but is stuff i will have to know about if i can ever bear to peel myself away from the job and the "collection" i have now. because i treat the section as though it is an living extension of me, and i always want it to look good and be healthy (i.e. - have more "good" books than "junk") but at the same time, it has to be "productive" as i recently had to learn.it is a tale i would call "triumph of the will", but that title has already been sullied.

if you have heard me bitching about this elsewhere, i apologize for repeating myself, but ima say it again here, because it is applicable and basically this book/class saved the day for books everywhere. or at least at my store.

and i will try to be brief.

basically, it comes down to the fact that i have had a pretty nice reign as fiction queen all these years. i am not the buyer, per se, but i have been able to get whatever i want into the store, because the buyer trusts me because i make a ton of money for the store - more than any fiction department in the country. so whether it is print on demand titles, or goodreads.com authors
that no one is coming into the store specifically to find, or very small publishers or obscure world lit - i have been able to order it and trust that it will come in, and that i can make it sell through displays and whatnot. i also like to keep a stable of backlist higher-lit fiction that maybe doesn't move as quickly as some of the other stuff, but is important for the prestige of the section, and the strength of the "collection".(because i do view it as a collection - as an archive - as a representation of literature through the ages not as a place where people can come to buy books for the beach) so - i always have three copies of every robert coover book, 2 or 3 each of stanley elkin, john barth, harry mathews etc - even people i don't like or haven't read, but these "types" of post-moderny fiction writers that maybe aren't as popular as they once were, but goldangit they should still be there.

so but now with nook and economy and our store having been "overextended" for years, they finally came knocking. and they handed me a list that was 44 pages long. (i know, because i have it right here - and that is just general fiction, not poetry, mystery, romance, westerns, sci-fi - those were separate lists) and they wanted me to return all of it, claiming they were books that hadn't sold in a year - some of which we had been modeled for, but no longer were, and some (many) that were books i had brought in myself for the benefit of the book-buying world - like several of those coovers et.al. i like people to have options. people do not want options, they want twilight. so i tried to sweet talk, and got very practical, semi-sympathetic refusals. so there were tears and vomiting and general bad feelings. and i returned a lot of it - stuff i didn't care about, but that still left me with a bunch of titles i could not bear to send back: dalkey and nyrb titles, hesperus and melville house. and i despaired and despaired and found a couple of loopholes (some titles hadn't even been in the store for a year, so to me, they didn't count as "deadstock", and some had sold one or two copies which was enough to save them, technically.) but it was still bleak.

but then i got creative.

and i applied some tactics i learned in this class, and i was able to save many books just by displaying them with a "last chance" sign (and yes, i bought a bunch myself, as several of you goodreads.com book-recipients know, and other book-loving staff bought a bunch so there was some "cheating") but the important part is that now they are saying i can keep whatever is left (and since the ones that sold, sold, i am going to order in more copies and use sales as a justification and i would like to see them try and stop me!

now they are saying, "yeah don't return these, i guess you know best"

duh.

don't tell me how to raise my child.

and that story was not intended to be just me patting myself on the back and saying how heroic i am, (although feel free to create a mythology - a lore- around me) it's just illustrating that this shit matters. if you want to move books, in a library or a bookstore, people have to see them. i thought that names like barry unsworth and penelope fitzgerald would be enough for them to sell on their own, but i am learning that is no longer the case. frequently people get their book information from subway ads or what their friends are reading (and you goodreaders are of course major exceptions, because you mostly are aware of a range of books) but the public - they need to know their options and you can do that by highlighting the collection however you can.

if you are going to be in this business, this is important shit. it is not always going to be fun shit, but you gotta learn it. collection development policies, censorship issues, tailoring the collection to the community, deselection (shudder) - it's all part of the world of books, and it does matter.

i kind of regret that i only rented this book from chegg. i knew i was going to want to keep my r/a textbooks, but i rented the ones for this class, and now i kind of want this one back. (i do not want the digital licensing book back, though)

oh, and sorry for all the ranting/rambling. i have this passion for books, see...

*that is not a quote from the book, that is from my professor, dr. chelton.

come to my blog!

[Cel · Rating 4 out of 5]

**3.5**
As far as textbooks go, this one actually wasn't too bad of a read and was actually pretty informative. However, it was *extremely* dense in some sections.

[Monique · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had such a geekishly wonderful experience with this book that I think only aspiring librarians or fellow book obsessed individuals like myself will appreciate but I smiled from ear to ear..Okay so after seeing this book on the shelf I went to check it out and then found that it was Reference material and therefore closed to circulation so I was to have to copy or read this book in the library ..major sad face but ah ha after further review it was a actually a Staff reference manual, shouldn’t have been on the public floor at all ..uh oh and so therefore had no official catalog record..Well ahem, feeling all smart and truly interested in learning about cataloging as it is literally in my life every day right now I was intrigued and asked what a librarian would do in this predicament--, she said they would search for a record from an existing library (ie. Copy catalog) as a temporary solution but this turned into a special teachable moment for Nique as this book was published in 2004 and therefore qualified for weeding or the process of removing books over ten years old out of the library to make room for more recent references so in short I was able to check the book out temporarily and the book will then go to the floor associated with record creation and elimination…Long story short I got a firsthand experience of everything I picked the book up to learn about LOL, developing a library collection, what that entails—procedures, policies, reasons and acquisition, determining the effectiveness and evaluating the timeliness and user history and the criteria that resources must exhibit to be deemed ready for inclusion or exclusion in a library collection. I am currently in deep with a group project that I actually cited this book as a reference in so that also was exciting and I feel though it is an older reference it held true to today as everything discussed happened in the transaction of me checking this out---or maybe my local library is old school? Well in either case I found this book insightful, able to be used as a reference today and a way to learn about what a library has inside their collections and why?

[CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly not dull. I learned a lot from this book!

[Jackie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Way too dense, but it did have a lot of good information.

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

A new second edition of this book is now available. It covers the basic theory and terms of collection development and so for the beginner as a textbook in the basic elements of the subject, it's adequate. The book will be of more use to those heading into academic libraries than for those in other kind of libraries.

The style is strictly textbook--You won't want to read this for fun. Although appendices list all of the major sources for selection, one thing that this book won't provide is real practice in the art and science of which materials to choose and which to pass on for your particular library. Nor will it teach you how to hunt them down. That's not a failure of a book, it's just something that has to be learned a different way, through the hard work of understanding your community, your readers, and whatever kind of book or other material is in question.

If I were teaching a collection development, I'm honestly not sure I'd choose to use a textbook. There are dozens of practice activities that would prove more useful and most of the kind of vocabulary and theoretical knowledge in this book could be provided more painlessly through lecture. Again, that's not meant as a knock on this book, just a personal preference for how I would impart this kind of material to new librarians.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This textbook was pretty straightforward to read. Gave some good insight into collection policies and management techniques.

[Amanda Perry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book for my Collection Development course - it was thorough, but very dry and sometimes repetitive. I also wish it had been updated at some point between 2012 and 2018.

[Skylis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Accessibility and structuring could use some work to make this instructional text more effective. Information was often valuable, but sometimes skimmed where it might have been better to pare down on topics and go into an idea more deeply. I think that more practical recommendations would have been helpful for this book, but the theoretical basis was good enough. I definitely wouldn't read this text alone for a full introduction, though.

[Kari · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book--which Is a textbook for library collection development--was surprisingly readable. Johnson does a good job of breaking down the particulars of the topic into layman's terms without patronizing the reader. I particularly appreciated the scenarios at the end of each chapter as well as the coordinated optional article readings.

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was not just Fundamentals...it was EVERYTHING about Collection Development, Management, Marketing, etc....
It was seriously too much, even for a librarian. If you want the most in-depth book on the subject though, be my guest.

[Jenna (Falling Letters) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A practical and informative book, good for my introductory class to collection management. I particularly liked the balance between academic, special, and public libraries. Easy to skim/skip sections not relevant to you.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read for class.

[Georgia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great resource for LIS

[Tanya · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fairly dry for what I consider an interesting subject.

[Jason St. Clair · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a textbook. What more do you need to know?

There's a lot of useful information in here but it's probably far more useful for a student than a professional.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dense but useful text that includes detailed information about a vast array of issues within Collection Development. Several of the chapters I did not find as relevant as I had hoped, as they were specifically geared toward academic libraries, but it is still a great introduction for students and librarians alike.

[Ida]

Textbook. Good, in-depth, understandable explanations of many, many aspects of the subject. I learned a lot.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful, but sometimes unnecessarily dense/detailed.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

So dense, but I did learn a lot. Could do with some editing for length! The text size is so tiny to make it fit in the allotted pages

[Cecilia Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

A source of great information but at times the material can be painfully dull.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for a class. Pretty good as far as textbooks go but I do think it spent too much time describing specific companies and programs because they change so rapidly in technology.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the last book I read in library school; happily, it was also one of the best. This is a rare example of a well-written textbook by someone with a working knowledge of the subject, which also makes use of the most current literature to strengthen its informational value. While the subject may seem dry, managing collections is an area that librarians can readily get passionate about, and Johnston's writing makes the subject interesting and clear. She manages to divide her attention well between the major areas of librarianship (public, academic, and school libraries, particularly - not as much for special libraries outside of these areas), and covers the material in a logical manner. The book comes with several good features, including an excellent index, a useful glossary of terms (one I would recommend to any library student, whether interested in managing collections or not), sample policy statements and contracts, and a list of recommended reasources (good for getting homework done). I suspect that as I transition from a student into a professional, these appendices will remain useful references. The only major criticism I have is of the final chapter, on scholarly communications, which repeats material that is handled better elsewhere (see Scholarly Communications For Librarians) and really adds little to the subject of managing collections. I'd advise the publisher to omit it in future editions and lower the price of the volume accordingly.

[Dale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gripping. Grueling. Superb.

[Emily Rink · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for graduate school and honestly, this wasn't the worst textbook I have read - but it certainly wasn't the best.

When this book says the "fundamentals" of collection development, that's a complete lie. This was an "everything AND the kitchen sink" type of book. This included everything from diversity audits to budgeting to collection purchasing advice. Even for myself, who was in my second year in grad school while starting this this was a lot to unpack. I found that a lot of this information could have been simplified or not included at all.

[April · Rating 3 out of 5]

Comprehensive and informative, Peggy Johnson places collection development and management in rich theoretical, historical, and practical context and emphasizes the importance of this discipline for all libraries and librarians. This 2nd edition includes more in-depth treatment of issues for public and school libraries than the first and issues concerning electronic collections are integrated into each chapter.

[Saadia · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my most favourite reference books. It was one of the most helpful books during my LIS program. Well constructed, easy to use, and clear to understand. I studied via distance learning and this book helped immensely in answering basic questions about collection building in a library. I reckon it will remain a favourite of mine for years to come just because how easily it answered the basic questions related to policy, developing collection, managing collection, and collection analysis.

[Heather Turner · Rating 1 out of 5]

This title is really boring. I have to read it for a Collection Development class. I am not impressed with the writing and find the information repetitive. The professor has us reading the title out of our and this further incites confusing and annoyance. Pick another title library professors please!

[Kristine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much of this text were very helpful in my collection development class, but a little too much of it was redundant. It was definitely worth keeping afterward and will be a good tool for reminders later in my career. Johnson clearly knows the subject and tries to balance her presentation for both those very familiar with and those new to libraries.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Textbook) I was required to read this book my Collection Development and Management Class. It seemed very informational, but I don't think I retained much from it. Recommended as a text book, but it would be hard to read for fun.