Strategies for Keeping Your Collection Alive and Vibrant During Budget Cuts

1. Strategies for Keeping Your Collection Alive and Vibrant During Budget Cuts Carolyn M. Myers carolynm@multcolib.org An Infopeople Workshop Spring 2005

2. This Workshop Is Brought to You By the Infopeople Project Infopeople is a federally-funded grant project supported by the California State Library. It provides a wide variety of training to California libraries. Infopeople workshops are offered around the state and are open registration on a first-come, first-served basis. For a complete list of workshops, and for other information about the Project, go to the Infopeople Web site at infopeople.org.

3. Agenda • Prepare for Cuts Before they Happen • Making Cuts to the Collection Budget • Continue Developing for the Future • Ideas For Keeping Your Collection Vibrant

4. Introductions • Name • Title • Library • Did you have to make cuts to your budget last year? What amount or percent?

5. The Challenge of Cuts What problems have occurred in your community as a result of cuts you had to make?

6. Prepare Ahead for Cuts • Have a collection plan in place • Know how your collection reflects your library purpose and policies • Make use of documents such as: • Mission Statement • Long Range Plan • Collection Development Policy

7. Mission Statement Extracts “Multnomah County Library serves the people…by providing…materials to meet their informational, educational, cultural and recreational needs…providing people of all ages with access and guidance to information and collections that reflect all points of view.” “The Millar library facilitates Portland State University’s mission of teaching and learning to enhance intellectual, social, cultural and economic life for undergraduates and professional programs relevant to metropolitan areas.”

8. Long Range Plan • Sets direction • Measurable goals and objectives

9. Update and Write Policies and Procedures • Use slack time to write policies on collection development, materials selection, or disaster recovery • Analyze ordering, processing, workflow, and job descriptions • Review policies and practices with staff

10. Measures that Help Assess Your Collection Development Policy • Statistical reports • Usage patterns • Holdings • Demographics • Benchmarks

11. What Statistics Do You Collect and How Do You Use Them?

12. Turnover Rates Are you familiar with turnover rates and their use as a tool for evaluating your collection? Turnover = Circulation divided by holdings

13. Analyze Your Collection • Consider using some form of collection analysis, such as Conspectus or other formal process • Two examples: • WorldCat Collection Analysis http://www.oclc.org/collectionanalysis • Bowker’s Book Analysis System http://www.BowkerSupport.com

14. Understand The Place of the Collection • Status and importance within the library • Within the local political context • Compared to national peer libraries

15. Exercise #1 Using Statistics

16. Developing a Strategy for Making Cuts • Who will make the decision • What type of cuts will be made • Decide on a process • Communicate the rationale

17. Who Decides? • Your funding agency • Your library director • Executive committee • Selection committee • Yourself

18. What is the Nature of the Cuts? • One time • Short duration • Long term

19. Decide How the CutsWill Be Made • Request input and involve all concerned • Develop guidelines to help staff who will make specific cuts • Offer support to staff making the cuts • consider a team leader or a person who can handle the documentation

20. After the Cuts Have Been Made…Communicate! • Tell staff the specific cuts and give the reasons and rationale used • Inform the public if appropriate • If there is an implementation delay, remind the staff again about the cuts and the rationale • Thank all staff for their hard work

21. Exercise #2 Handling Budget Cuts

22. Document Cuts For Future Use • List each cut, its magnitude, and the rationale behind it • Make a file of memos sent • Write down and make a file of anything useful you learned during the experience • Record the impact of each cut on the collection

23. Acknowledge Possible Benefits of Budget Cuts • Provides rationale for shifting priorities to future needs • Oversized and underused collections can be pruned • Media no longer in use can be eliminated • A “Sacred Cow” gift collection can be sacrificed

24. What Sacred Cow Collection Should You Consider Cutting in Your Library? Why?

25. Temptations to Resist • Don’t stop weeding • continue with your weeding criteria • maintain your weeding schedule • Resist cutting out popular materials • Don’t ignore new formats

26. Focus on the Future of the Collection • “Treading Water” means your collection is going nowhere • Use the Mission Statement and Long Range Plan to guide decisions • Don’t be surprised at contention as values are examined in public

27. Exercise # 3 Defending Collection Changes

28. Keep the Collection Visible • Issue an annual state of the collection report • summarize what happened the prior year; including items purchased, titles added, etc. • summarize the year ahead, including % of budget going to adults, children, reference, periodicals, spoken, DVDs, etc. • remind people about any significant events planned for the collection

29. How Do You Make the Collection at Your Library Vibrant?

30. Ideas for Keeping Your Collection Vibrant • Allow materials to remain at the branch where they are returned • staff and delivery time are saved • the public enjoy seeing a wider range of titles • Shorten the check out time for certain popular materials

31. More Ideas for a Vibrant Collection • Set up a rental collection for best sellers • Issue a press release educating the public about circulation numbers for the most popular books • Market your collection with regularly changing displays

32. Maintain Visibility With Support Groups • Plan presentations to: • Library Board • Library Foundation • Other groups?

33. Do Something New Each Year with the Collection • Decide what needs the most outside help • Ask a support group for funding to get the target collection started • Give the group a lot of publicity • Thank them as explicitly as possible

34. Seek Help From Local Businesses • Encourage businesses to fund additions related to their area • They may be able to provide programs tied to their collection enhancement area • Follow good procedural guidelines so problems will be avoided

35. Investigate Collaboration With a Local School • They may see advantage in hiring your selection and technical service staff • Collaboration results in added investment and publicity for your value to the community

36. Appeal to Your Public for Help • Ask them to donate paperbacks in good condition • They could give subscriptions to their favorite magazine • Set up a wish list of bestsellers at local bookstores or Amazon.com and ask the public to give them as gifts to the library

37. Exercise #4 Ways to Enhance the Library’s Importance in Your Community

38. Thank You Please fill out your Evaluation Form