Building the Collection
Course
Acquisitions and Processing [5:40]
- Learn how the library budget influences purchasing decisions and examine creative ways to grow the acquisition budget.
- Learn about various purchasing tools to support your learning community's unique collection development needs.
- Learn how the audience, the budget, and the marketing efforts influence the processing of acquisitions.
It is important to communicate with school administration to determine your collection development budget. It is important to know which resources to include in the collection development budget: eBooks, audiobooks, database subscriptions, maker supplies, and periodicals. Once your budget is set, assess what currently exists in the collection to help identify needs and wants, get to know your school community to identify areas requiring the most growth. There are subscription-based services that will work within a pre-established budgetary amount for new acquisitions. Consider circulation statistics and future ready goals to determine budget allocations for each resource type and genre. Vendors like Follett and Mackin have collection analysis tools with percentage breakdowns of items in the collection. Another strategy for working within your budget is to do some research to gauge cost projections. For example, School Library Journal's website posts average annual book prices.
There are various ways to creatively grow one's collection development budget with the permission of the school's leadership. Family involvement can increase participation, so invite families to have birthday book parties hosted by the school library in which families can opt to pay a fee for their child to select a book from the new book collection and have it plated with a personalized sticker honoring the child's birthday. These donations can help offset the cost of new acquisitions. Book fair vendors often give school libraries the opportunity to grow their collections through a rewards program. For example, Scholastic has a Scholastic Dollars Online catalog that includes books, maker supplies, library furnishings, educational technology, and other library-related accessories. School librarians can also apply for collection development grants, some of which may be found on AASL's Awards and Grants website.
A school library network can influence purchasing power. There are membership consortiums that negotiate the best prices. Public schools often form their own consortiums within the same state or district. Independent schools can join member organizations like MISBO for lower resource prices as a collective. Finally, subscription based services like EBSCO can manage periodical acquisitions to save your internal time and resources.
Now that you have spent the money to acquire new materials, you want to make sure they are noticed by the entire library community! When you receive your new books, there is still work to be done in processing the new titles, so they are shelf ready. If many materials are purchased at once, it may be worth paying the vendor processing fee or training some student assistants to help process the new titles. You'll want to consider marketing goals, patron needs, and time constraints in conjunction with the budget when making these decisions. Prior to shelving, generate enthusiasm for new items. Build anticipation and share coming soon and release date notifications for multimedia resources. Lay acquisitions out on tables and allow students, families, and teachers the time and space to interact with these new items. Consider an organizational system that will allow the collection to be most accessible to the students, colleagues, and families in your specific physical and digital spaces.
Thoughtful budgetary planning and processing can result in the significant use of a robust collection. Acquiring new titles based on your budget can be a difficult task that takes time and consideration of what you need in your collection. There are many programs out there that can help you work within your budget, as well as ways to help grow your budget once you have the new books and have processed them. It's time to spread the word.
Experience demonstrates that there is a direct correlation between marketing and budgeting. Programs that showcase the school's appeal are often financially supported, sometimes creatively. With this in mind, it is beneficial to consider how acquisitions can also serve as marketing tools to advocate for the school library. Read Donna Kearley's article, "Advocating for Robust Budgets," in the Resources, complete the Reflect & Practice activity below.
After reading Kearley's article on advocacy and budgeting, use the chart on page 21 of the Course Packet (found in the Resources above) to create a purchasing list that will help you plan for future purchases with your budget in mind. Highlight the value of these items in the notes section of your purchasing list. Leverage this planning tool so that it serves a dual purpose as an advocacy tool. Share the purchasing list with your school leadership to encourage a healthy collection development budget.
MLA Citation
Brown, Stacy. "Building the Collection: Planning and Advocating for Future Acquisitions." School Library Connection, February 2023, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2295732?learningModuleId=2293930&topicCenterId=2293930.
Entry ID: 2295750
Additional Resources
About the Author
MLA Citation
Brown, Stacy. "Building the Collection. Acquisitions and Processing [5:40]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, February 2023, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2295732?learningModuleId=2293930&topicCenterId=2293930.
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2295732?learningModuleId=2293930&topicCenterId=2293930
Entry ID: 2295732