Does my library need more physical or digital reference sources? I think that this is an important question that many librarians ponder when managing their reference collections.  Alderman (2014, p.1))  states that the reference collection is limited to just the resources that are for in-library use only. We have very few reference materials that are for ‘in-library use only’ because I believe the students should have access to take most titles home. The only exceptions are some very heavy Atlases and the current year of Guinness Book of World Records, because it is so widely used by all of the students and it tends to get damaged quickly when taken home in school bags. My personal experience is from a Primary School library and I do believe the needs are different for secondary and university libraries. In my library, we are intentionally not growing the reference and non-fiction collection for sustainability reasons and to ensure our collection remains current, relevant and accurate. We are spending more time encouraging the use of our online Enclopaedias Brittanica and PebbleGo and using these and other digital resources as tools when researching and teaching information and digital literacy. As Farmer (2014) argues, maintaining these subscriptions do have budget implications because they are expensive, however, after doing a costing analysis, I believe it is the best use of our budget. I am also aware that I am in the fortunate potion of having a good budget and this will not always necessarily be the case.

Farmer (2014, p.70) talks about the reference section life cycle which includes acquisition, processing, organisation, circulation, maintenance and deselection. I related to working through all of these stages and have spent a lot of time both organising and deselecting or ‘weeding’ titles. My library staff and I have undertaken a massive reorganisation of the non-fiction collection. We still use an abridged form of Dewey but have re-catalogued many books with different Dewey numbers to avoid having titles on their own and perhaps where they are less likely to be discovered. For example, a biography about a sportsperson could be placed in the 620 section with sports or it could be in the 920 section with biographies. We always ask the question “where is this most likely to be discovered by a patron?’ when we decided where to place it. We have also been undertaking a fairly significant weed and only replacing those titles that are high interest or those that are linked to curriculum topics. Therefore I agree with Farmers point that all 5 stages of the life cycle are important.

References

Alderman, J. (2014). What is a reference collection? LIS1001 Beginning Library Information Systems & Strategies. Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.unf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1021&context=bliss

Farmer, L. S. J. (2014). Developing resource collections, Chapter 4. In Introduction to reference and informations services in today’s school library [Rowman & Littlefield Publishers version]. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/lib/csuau/reader.action?ppg=52&docID=1664627&tm=1499996228722