9.2005-present, Spanish Peaks Library District, Collection Manager

Collection development is the field where I feel like I get to play the most – it’s intellectually intense and challenging, as technically demanding and precision-oriented as cataloging and as nuanced and ever-changing and interpersonal as reference, and intertwines with both. It’s lists and statistics, and holding the hand of the patron whose sister just died and left behind a lifetime’s worth of love of music. It’s bestsellers and local authors, and books that might not get read for a decade but need to be there for the one patron who really needs them. It’s knowing that weeding is as important as acquisition, and having the loving ruthlessness to do it well. It’s being responsive to what people ask for, and what they don’t. It’s the humility to not assume we know better than the patrons what they want, and the activist’s fire to take a stand that this particular work is important, damn it, and if you hold it, it will find its own audience. It’s the most ancient of library services, at the bottom line – which content is this institution going to have a stake in, and which are we going to release?  – and the most cutting-edge, technology-driven, industry-driven of library services.

Collection development is entangled with my own experience as a consumer of media, and working in it has grown and enriched me as an individual. There are genre I’ll probably never read habitually, but in the process of learning enough about them to select competently, I’ve picked up and enjoyed such a range of stuff that I would never have given a second glance on my own. I’m grateful for it, and it’s my comfort zone, the work I go back to when I’m most tired or discouraged to get centered again.

Current project: Sorting, prioritizing, and processing an 1100-item music donation

Current fascinations: Muslim-American literature; climate change literature; collection-driven passive programming (where does “collection” end and “service” begin?), especially for tweens.

Best learning experience: Prowling the ALA Annual 2010 vendor floor with my non-librarian but super-geeky best friend, explaining it all, exploring it at a depth I might never have done on my own.

Proudest accomplishments:

• Maintaining, for 8 years, a $40-50k/year collection development program on a $16k book budget, through careful and proactive selection of vendor discounts and cultivating relationships with ongoing and one-time donors.
• Working with our architect and Director during the move to SPLD’s new building in 2009 to develop a shelving plan to support 10 years of expansion; personally overseeing transport and shelving of collection in the new facility; maintaining and updating that shelving plan over the 5 years since.

Portfolio:

Sorting Donations (internal, 2013)

Collections Checklist (Colorado Library Standards: Report to the Board of Trustees, 2012)

Playaway donation thank you letter (2009)

Shoestring Collection Development (CALCON 2007)