Youth Services Collection Maintenance

Collection Maintenance Policy Guidelines

Why have a collection maintenance policy?

• Clarifies the goals and objectives of collection development of your library
• Can be used as a staff training and orientation tool
• Provides guidelines and standards for purchases
• Provides guidelines for de-selecting materials
• Provides guidelines for accepting gifts
• Provides guidelines for challenges to materials

What should a collection maintenance policy include?

• Your library’s mission
• Your community and users’ needs
• Intellectual freedom and access statement
• Identify who does the selection of materials
• Subject boundaries
• Collection strengths and concentrations
• Limitations
• Selection criteria
• Detailed policies by subject and form
• Gift and donation guidelines
• Retention and de-accession
• Cooperative relationships
• Reconsideration policy

As with all your policies, your collection maintenance policy should be

• Aligned with your strategic plan’s mission and goals
• Clearly written
• Consistent with already existent policies
• Reviewed regularly

Helpful tips:

• Read policies from other libraries and adapt them for your library
• Don’t forget to have a section describing cooperative purchases (are you a member of a network? Remember to add a statement about network selections such as Overdrive—your network can help with this)
• Don’t underestimate the importance of the reconsideration policy

Adapted from Curley, Arthur and Dorothy Broderick. Building Library Collections.