Library Collection Development Evolution Strategy

About the Program

Category: Libraries (Best in Category)

Year: 2018

The San Bernardino County Library is committed to resources that are relevant to all of our customers in the communities that we serve. By restructuring our Collection Development strategy, the methods by which we order books and materials, we were able to better meet the needs of our customers and as a byproduct increase the library’s overall circulation of materials. The restructure included a campaign which was developed to allow customers to make recommendations for new library materials to be purchased. To allow for ease of customer requests, we accepted recommendations for purchases online and in person and used these recommendations to make direct purchasing decisions. Secondly, the collection development process was re-evaluated and restructured to make purchasing more driven by demand rather than by previous structure Traditional library collection development had to be set aside as more of a retail minded approach was implemented specifically purchasing only materials that show high patterns of circulation. These new methods have sparked the circulation of the County Library to nearly double in a matter of only 4 years.