Approaching collection policies and procedures

It is hard for me to begin any blog post without relating the topic back to my previous experiences acting as a teacher librarian for several years. On the matter of collection policy and procedure, it took me about 5 years before I understood why I really needed these and first attempted to write a collection policy. The collection policy probably would have stayed an unformed thing (an idea in my brain only) but for an instance of a challenged book and my need to defend its presence in our collection. My approach to collection development procedures and policies was to keep it unwritten, unformed, but also vaguely understood.

My first attempt at a collection policy was written to defend a book from a challenge and I am not sure if I consulted the many excellent resources available from ALIA, IFLA, or other large professional entities, but I did consult St Andrew’s Cathedral School’s collection policy as a template for what was required because it was available. I knew that a collection policy was required  when the (new) principal asked, “What does the collection policy say?” Needless to say, I did not say, “What policy?” The rest is history.

My next approach (as I am now at a school with a healthy and up to date collection policy and procedures) will be much different. I now know of the support offered by national bodies in Australia, and those abroad. I understand the need for a theoretical and philsophical basis for a policy which acknowledges the needs and goals it is trying to achieve, and that the scope of a collection policy needs to consider access to external resources. While I addressed some of these issues in my first attempt, there was a lack of understanding of how to move the collection forward, and how to use the collection policy to clearly make the library a learning hub. This was something I knew I wanted to do, but lacked a thorough understanding of how this might happen beyond creating a space which was welcoming and resourced with a physical collection. As Newsum (2016, School Collection Development) shows in a literature review of school collection development in a digital environment, the decentralised collection, along with a teacher librarian knowledgable in areas of curriculum, needs, and understanding of new technologies are opportunities for the librarian to be a leader in the learning community. This must be worked into a collection development policy.

A final area of focus for approaching the creation of collection development policy and procedures would be taking the time to measure the collection not just in terms of number of resources, but in terms of meeting needs. Mitchell’s (2018) article explains the value of measuring and evaluating the collection.  ALIA Schools and Victorian Catholic Teacher Librarians collection evaluation and self-reflection guidelines would be a major focus in the lead up to writing or adjusting the policy, and embedding the results of the evaluation in the policy in terms of goals and direction.