ILA Conference: Day 2-- RA, Collection Development, and Patron Service

No surprise here, but today my personal theme of learning was RA, Collection Development and Patron Service. How the three go together.

PLEASE NOTE: THERE ARE PROBABLY TYPOS HERE. IN ORDER TO GET THESE POSTS OUT QUICKLY, I AM ON SCANNING THEN AFTER WRITING THEM DURING THE PROGRAM.

First session featured my former co-worker [and boss] Kathy and a former student Ally who both work together in Readers’ Sevices at Skokie Public Library.

We Welcome Everyone - Inclusive Readers’ Advisory:

We all agree that we need diverse books. Indeed, we as readers' advisors need to suggest more diverse books. Come learn how we challenged our patrons to read (and our staff to suggest) more diversely and how we're making diversity a normal part of readers' advisory.

Allyson CoanAdult Services LibrarianSkokie Public Library 

Kathy SextonReaders Services SupervisorSkokie Public Library

You can access their slides here. Search by either presenters’ last name and it will pull right up. They have a lot of pictures of the things write about below.

• Skokie is working very hard to be more consciously diverse. They began by acknowledging that not only is selection privilege, but so is suggestion. Meaning that you can work as hard as you want to make your collections more diverse, but if your staff doesn’t know about these titles and/or never suggests them-- these books won’t get read. 
• They consciously changed their popular “Good Reads” shelf. It is their “most wanted” display right near the main entrance. Instead of simply buy extra copies of the books that had the highest circulation, they made a conscious decision to include diverse books and it is so popular that they have to refill it constantly. 
• If you give people more diverse options, they do read them. 
• Skokie Welcomes Everyone [Skokiecares.org] was a community wide initiative toward inclusion and diversity.
• They talked about their Spring Reading Challenge and how they challenged people to read something new to them. Here is the link to the form. People loved it. They loved being challenged to try something new. The staff was there to help based on their preferences, likes, and dislikes. 
• See the slides (link above) for some of the results and feedback of what they suggested and how patrons enjoyed it.
• They also mentioned how working together as a staff- 25 ppl involved- to make suggestions was in and of itself a great training tool. Everyone involved was seeing the requests and the suggestions. Everyone learned about new authors while working together!!!
• 86 people participated over 3 months. 21 ppl did more than one challenge.  1 person did 7. Several did 5. That’s a lot over 3 months.
• Because they asked people to challenge themselves and made the process personal, they got very valuable and honest feedback. They also did a very short- 2 minute survey to all participants. One question was,” Were you introduced to a new genre, format, or author you will try again in the future?” Over 70% said yes.
• To help yourself improve- you need to be conscious about it. Ally found the image  on the DEMCO website, printed it out and puts it by her desk to keep herself honest.
• They analyzed all of the books they suggested through their BookMatch program. The results are in the slides. For example, they suggested a lot of white women. Okay, that’s their baseline. Now they know this and try NOT to always suggest those authors. 
• THIS CAN BE DONE. YOU HAVE TO BE INTENTIONAL. SEEK OUT THESE DIVERSE AUTHORS.
• There were times this was hard. Kathy noticed that publishers are not publishing these books. YA books do a much better job of publishing stories that raise up marginalized ppl. But adult books-- not so much. Kathy’s advice is that you can’t get frustrated. When you are intentional, it changes the landscape on what you put out there, but you can only suggest what is published. We are not up to speed there yet.
• In their analysis [agin in slides] they also looked at own voices question too.
• They also included a slide of all of their resources that they used. Check them out.
• The overall key here is that you can’t wait for diversity to happen. You need to make a conscious decision to be inclusive. This is HUGE. I have many friends and colleagues at Skokie and I am proud of them. They have a diverse staff and a diverse community, but even then, they were falling behind. If you learn nothing else from this series of posts from the ILA conference, I hope you take this away.

Next was Weeding Wonderland:

Selecting materials is only half of the collection development process. Welcome to the Weeding Wonderland, where we continue the collection development process. We will talk about the tricky and challenging problem of saying “Be Gone!” to the weeds in your collection. We will provide you with some tips, tricks and tools for evaluating your collection that support the patron experience and access to materials.

Patricia SchwartzTeen LibrarianWest Branch, Aurora Public Library 

Carol McFarlandReference LibrarianLemont Public Library 

Monica MinnickChildren's Services LibrarianNaperville Public Library 

Dorothy RyanDirectorMcKinstry Library, Lincoln College 

Karen ToonenAdult Services LibrarianNaperville Public Library

They have handouts and slides here. Search by any of the presenters’ last name and it will come right up.

Also, Karen will be doing a longer version of her part-- about weeding fiction-- at ARRTCon.

• Why Weed? It is an important part of collection development. Easy to choose books, hard to decide what to remove.
• Tend your collection like it is garden. Remove the weeds and let the flowers shine. With over crowded shelves, good books get lost.
• Weeding is also a great way for you, the selector to know your collection.
• Weeding regularly also lets you see how highly packed your shelves are in certain sections.
• Reports vs. touching your books- Do what works best for you. Both work.
• Inspect all areas for circulation rates, condition, and representation of diverse voices
• How to get your staff to buy in?
• Know your stakeholders. Anticipate their questions. Are you going to replace that?, for example. Book as a sacred object. Some stakeholders thought just being a book means you can’t get rid of it.
• Be ready to explain your rationale/criteria. How will you explain yourself.
• Have a collection development policy to back you up. 
• Educate stakeholders that weeding is part of a healthy library collection.
• Make and argument: Basic ones-- average age of collection, circulating stats, chaining needs
• Communicate! You have to be as transparent as possible. Accept feedback and suggestions about the process. Especially the disposal! People want to here that you are donating or recycling. Anything but throw in trash. [Sometimes you have to, e.g.. mold]. Allow veto power.
• Tips, Tricks, & Policies
• Easiest is weeding by condition.
• By the way-- mold is bad. It spreads!
• Policies are for everything else. The handout [link above] had examples of deselection 
• MUSTIE
• Reports! ILS or Collection HQ. You pick the criteria that you can use to weed by. Last checkout date, date published, number of checkout.
• At Naperville-- they don’t want more than 5% of the collection to be “dead.” Dead for them is not checked out in 18 months.
• When they weren’t regularly weeding- it was a hard and fast rule. A place to start to deep clean collection. Now it is just a maintenance issue. Everything is circulating more now that collection is cleaned up.
• Your library needs to create their own criteria-- and you must be ruthless with the criteria. Very few exceptions.
• Examples of books in pristine condition and are very new that didn’t circulate. But we have to get rid of the things that your patrons don’t want to make room for what they do want.
• Work on small sections at a time. Work on a single shelf at a time. Don’t overwhelm yourself.
• Weed daily. Pull old looking books as you are helping patrons.
• If you don’t weed daily, you end up weeding hundreds of books at a time, and when patrons see stacks of weeded books, that is bad PR.
• The more you weed, the easier it gets. Get rid of it and you will replace it with a book that will become someone’s favorite.
• Other questions to ask yourself? Is there is another copy-- yes. Is it an award winner? Can you get it in another format. Is it part of your local history. Would you be embarrassed if your library didn’t own it?
• WE ARE NOT ARCHIVAL LIBRARIES! WE CANNOT KEEP EVERYTHING.
• Where to start? Technology is a great place to start. Science. Kids biographies of no longer popular people.
• Fiction vs Nonfiction. So much more documentation on weeding Nonfiction. 
• Weeding for age doesn’t work in fiction. Ex: Agatha Christie is old but goes out like crazy.
• But “Ugly” works. If you are embarrassed to take it home, get rid of it. You can replace it.
• Elsewhere-- can I get it ILL?
• Weeding series! If you pull your dead items and many come from the same series, it might be time for that series to go.
• What if book 8 in a 10 book series is dead? For series it is great to keep newest books in a series and the first couple. This keeps fans of series happy and still allows you to introduce new readers to the series. You can get them the middle books through ILL.
• Make a MAX number of copies for in demand titles. Only make rare exceptions. 
• The James Patterson problem. There are too many books. Evanovich, Sanford, Steel and Woods also write multiple books a year. These titles will never show up on your dead reports. You have to go in and weed them with higher standards. 
• Times to be more cautious-- audio and large print for less popular authors. You might be able to replace them.
• Common excuses not to read books-- It’s my favorite! Oh well. You can give your favorite book a chance. Hand sell it or put it on displays. If you can’t get it to circle in a year-- it has to go. If you really need to have it, weed it, put it on book sale and buy it for your home collection.
• IT’S NOT YOUR LIBRARY OR YOUR COLLECTION. It’s your community’s and you are the curator for THEM. 
• It is a popularity contest. Our shelf space is precious
• If our collection development policy is “Give Them What They Want,” then our weeding policy should be “Get Rid of What They Don’t Want.”
• Goal is to have 20% of your collection out at any one time.
• After you ruthlessly weed, you will have more space for cover out shelving. Circ stats prove that shelf out circulate at double the rate.
• You can always put some dead books face out to give them one last chance.
• Good books or classics sometimes just need a new cover.
• Wrap up:
• Weed early, Weed Often!
• Questions: What to do with employees who go behind your back- At Naperville they review you each year on if you collection is 5% dead or less!
• Changing your shelving to based on how readers read. So world building nonfiction about a fiction series like Pern or George RR Martin needs to be shelved with the fiction series they are about. That is where they will circulate.
• Suggestion from audience: Make a sign for selectors- “Every purchase is a future discard.” LOVE IT!

Don’t Throw Away Your Shot at Stats: How To Build Useful Collection Statistics from Scratch:

Why look elsewhere for collection statistics when all of the data is already stored in your ILS? Learn how to use your collection data to create meaningful statistics through commonly available applications, and gain insight into your collections by conducting a collection analysis. Discover what data is available in your database, how to retrieve it, and how to present it so selectors can make better-informed ordering decisions. 

Rebecca BartlettHead of Technical ServicesLa Grange Public Library 

Kristina JohnstonCollection Services LibrarianGail Borden Public Library District 

Lisa BobisTechnical Services ManagerJoliet Public Library 

Matt HammermeisterILS ManagerPinnacle Library Cooperative 

Susan LytinenData Projects SpecialistGail Borden Public Library District

They have handouts and slides here. Search by any of the presenters’ last name and it will come right up.

I went to this session- which was more focused on cataloging- to see the cataloging side of the collection story. I have written more about the importance of RA people working with catalogers here. Hearing the catalogers side of the story was very enlightening. Working with “front line staff” issues came up. I was so glad to hear them. I hope these notes inspire some of you seek out training or information from tech services people. They are our allies, not our enemies.

Also, this session was excellent to go to right after the weeding session!

• Set up your collection to get the right stats that you need and know that they are accurate.
• Think broad and then go specific- stat codes and collection codes.
• Also ask staff what they want and set up your collection in the ILS that way.
• Multiple codes. Some collections have one level, others you have multiple breakouts with codes.
• Multiple formats need to be standardized. So you get- Juvenile-Fiction-Audio. Make sure same as the books just add the audio. You will get better stats.
• DATA CLEANUP is important. If you don’t have the right stat and collection codes with the right call numbers, your stats will be wrong.
• How do you determine what stats you want?
• How often? all the time, fiscal year, calendar year.
• How specific- location, format, every 10 for Dewey, etc...
• Data retrieval. Schedule your reports so data comes when you need it. If your report is 10-12 steps, it is easy to forget one. Also this way you know it always runs at the same time, the same way.
• Compare apples to apples. 
• They talked about some useful reports
• Relative Use: the ratio of the % of the library’s circumstance vs, % of library’s holding for each collection. You want a 1-1 ratio. If you have 40% adult NF, it should be 40% of your circ. Higher and you don’t have enough, lower- you have too much.
• Turnover Rate: Circs per item spread out over entire collection. 
• % of items checked out. For entire collection. Yes. But you should also look at New items separately. They should be higher.
• They talked about active use vs dead collection. Dead collections came up in weeding session.
• Average Age. Good to run but serials can skew your results. You need to make a choice.
• At Joliet, they email out the reports to all selectors each month. They can break them down as much or as little as that selector wants/needs.
• At Gail Borden they compare circulation to total holdings. Similar to the previous ppl’s relative use. But they use a visualization model with charts and graphs.
• Why you should visualize data?
• Makes patterns and trends easy to spot. Quicker. Colors and shapes easier to digest than numbers.
• Keep the graphics simple when you visualize.
• Data needs to be filtered and formatted. Pivot tables allow you to drag and drop the data you want without having to manipulate it. You choose what to compare and the table does it.
• You have to normalize your data- You can’t compare circulation to holdings. 
• Using Excel Pivot Charts. 
• Play with the charts and click around. It doesn’t change the base data, it is only changing how you visualize it. [Becky: I love this advice.]
• Use Lynda.com for a class. Ask Google.
• Using Access tables and queries to get more data if your ILS doesn’t gather it. She went into a lot of detail about how to do it. If you are interested contact Susan in the list above.
• Using Collection Statistics for Staff Training:
• With Rebecca from my home library!
• She talked about the LGPL Collection Development Plan. Plan is 88 pages. Policy is 2 pages.
• Each selector wrote their sections. Rebecca provided the statistics.
• Showed how they use statistics to help selectors buy and weed in their collections.
• They can use statistics and reports to track collection development performance over time. They now have 4 years of data for every collection in library.
• Use for purchasing and weeding yes, but also to evaluate off and new formats.
• What to get rid of
• Where to grow-- allocating shelf space
• Allows you to decide what collections to promote and display.
• Questions: What about staff who use the relative use stats as an excuse to not weed? If relative use is 1:1 I don’t have to do anything. In that case dead items report from Collection HQ is key. Even in a 1:1 relative use collection, there ARE dead items.
• Q: Grubby in Collection HQ-- Different criteria for different collections.
• Q: What stats do you give the board each month? Board get simplified version in broad categories. Also Year to date and comparison same month for a different year.
• Q: Do you get pushback from your front line staff when you present stats? Visualization of data has helped with that. When you show them numbers, they shut down. When you make it super simple, people are more willing to accept that a change is needed. You can SEE it.
• Overall advice- share this data with all staff-- selectors and front line. Let them know what collections are doing well, which are struggling. Front line staff don’t have the time to assess things like “average age.” Joliet woman showed reference that the average age of their reference collection was 25yrs. Yikes! They didn’t know. Once they knew, they wanted to work on the collection.
• The staff need the data to understand their collections better. They can see the bigger picture and make better choices.