Reflecting on Collection Development!

Posted January 29, 2020 by Sarah Callanan

Let’s talk about Collection Development and Management!  Week 3 of the semester just started, and my first big assignment is due in a few days.  As I mentioned in my last post, I don’t have much, if any, practical experience in collection development–my current job as a Reference Assistant in an academic library mainly consists of me doing reference work, as well as some circulation and outreach.   Collection development is new territory for me, and I’ve been learning so much!  However, something that I have noticed is that there are common threads throughout a lot of my classes at SLIS, including this class.  Even though the overall topic may be new, there are elements that I’m building off of from other classes.  For example, in LIS 451: Academic Libraries, and LIS 404: Introduction to Management, we talked about how mission statements and core values informed the library and the overall structure of the organization, and how they relate to academic libraries (LIS 451) and management (LIS 404) in particular.  In this class, LIS 453: Collection Development and Management, we’re talking about how mission statements and a library’s core values or goals influence their collection development policy, and how both of those relate to the library’s service population.  I never really considered that a mission statement could have anything to do with a collection development policy, so this week has been enlightening and it has also reminded me of some of my past classes.

Even though this class just started it’s been really fun so far, and I’ve been really enjoying the pace of the class.  If you’ve read some of my past posts, you’ll know that I’ve only taken online classes my entire time at Simmons.  Online classes at Simmons are great–there is always a participation component, and I truly feel that you do get to interact with your classmates even if you aren’t “with” them in the traditional sense.  However, now that I’ve been here for a while, I’ve noticed that every class sort of approaches the participation a little bit differently. Some classes are more participation-heavy than others, some have more personal element to the participation forums,  some classes have live sessions, etc.  I have to say that I really like the approach that this class takes to the participation forums.  While the forums are an opportunity to interact with our classmates, a lot of the graded assignments and projects in this class build off of what we do in the forums, and by participating in the forums and completing the exercises, it really helps you get your assignments done.  For example, because I did my forum posts last week, I have almost all of my first assignment done.  In some of my other classes, the participation forums have been lively and informative, but have not really helped me finish a graded assignment or project.  However, I do appreciate the different approaches all of my previous classes at SLIS have taken to participation because all of them have helped me get to know my classmates and learn new skills. 

I’m really excited for the coming weeks of this class as we have some very interesting projects coming up!  I’ll tell you all about them in my future posts!  Stay tuned!