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.