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You got the
job! Well done, my friend. You will move to a quaint college town and be thrown
into the deep end of the library. Collection development is the most fun job
you can have in a library, and that is why they didn't even teach you it exists
in library school.
Based on my
time in collection development, my three bits of advice: be cool, be nice, be
magic.
Be Cool:
In many cases,
it's a lot of money, sure. You can handle it. Don't freak out. It's just a
matter of scale. You'll be all over it in no time. Also, you might think that
being responsible for all of that money at work will help you lead a
disciplined budgetary life at home. You are wrong. But you will get scary good
at managing an amount of money that you did not have a method of comprehending.
I recommend
scheduling freak outs. You’re in charge of these budgets, so you need to freak out
every now and then about the money, at least for show. January and July are the
required times, but if you enjoy those, go ahead and do it once a quarter.
Freak out time of year is a good time to run some giant lists (what you’ve
purchased, what you want to purchase, etc.) and make some huge spreadsheets
(how much money you’ve spent on which parts of the collection is a fun one). If
that doesn’t get you excited, I take back what I said about having the most fun
job. Loving spreadsheets and not feeling bad about it is part and parcel of
being a collection development librarian. Owning your love of spreadsheets is
the definition of cool. Be cool.
Be Nice:
You might feel
like you're just some awkward kid, and you may well be (I’ll admit I feel that
way at times), but if you remember to be nice to people, it will work out.
Be nice to
vendors. It is part of their job to be nice to you, and that will improve your
day, but returning the favor is good, too. You may be adversaries in business,
but that isn't any reason to be mean or dismissive. The more you know about each
other’s needs, the more likely you are to be able to reach a mutually beneficial
outcomes. Answer the phone, have a conversation, get to know each other. [Editor’s Note: But don’t be nice to the
vendors in a way that ends up being a disservice to you or your community.]
Plus, vendors know the best restaurants and bars.
Be nice to
faculty all of the time, even if they treat you terribly. It will happen, and
it will suck. Most of the time faculty will be pretty great. Ask faculty about
their research, their classes, their majors, and their curriculum. The truth is
that they want to talk about all of that and it will help you collect better.
Don't ask about the library; they don't think about the library that much. Thinking
about their students, classes, and research is their job. Your job is to worry
about how the library supports all that. Give and give to the faculty expecting
nothing in return. Returns will come.
Make friends
with secretaries and other support staff. The earth would spin wildly out of
orbit and be flung to the cold depths of the universe without secretaries. You
should be nice to secretaries because they are usually great and don't ever get
paid nearly enough. If you ask a beleaguered secretary how she is doing today
with genuine concern and interest, your kindness may be rewarded with useful
information. You should by no means inquire about her well-being in order to
obtain information and be careful to use this information wisely. When you are
consistently courteous and thoughtful when interacting with the executive secretary
of a top administrator, it may pay off when you need something done urgently.
You should not be nice because you may need something urgently done in the
future, you should be nice because it makes the world a more hospitable place.
Be Magic:
Your job is to
make things happen. Books appear; you get more resources with less money;
policies are revised; and outdated books disappear. As far as your community
should be concerned, all of this happens by magic!
The mechanics
of the way these things happen are foreign to those you serve, and honestly,
they can be pretty boring. Don't get me wrong: YOU will love it. (I know I do.) It
is a good policy to answer the question at hand and provide additional details
upon request. When someone needs a rush book, take their order and say “I’ll
see what I can do;” that faculty member is not interested in the rush order process,
they are interested in finishing writing their syllabus on time.
Don’t withhold
information willfully, be transparent in all of your decisions, but understand
that there are aspects about what you do that people are simply not interested
in. Your gigantic spreadsheets, for instance. People probably are not
interested in the brilliant mnemonic color-coding scheme you employed. Have the
data that influenced your decision on hand and in an understandable format. You
did the work, do yourself a solid and write a position memo to share with the
world, or at least the library. But the nitty gritty stuff isn’t important to
your community.
This is how I
do the job, but I know there are other ways to be successful as a collection
development librarian. Regardless, know this: you’ll be okay, kid.
Rachel Fleming is the Head of Serials at
Hunter Library at Western Carolina University in Collowhee, North Carolina. She
tweets at @RachelMFleming.
Happily, I did take a Collection Development class in school but unfortunately the professor really, REALLY had it in for publishers and Vendor Approval Plans. I agreed with him on a lot of the latter, but as a former publishing person I found myself defending them fairly often. Fortunately he didn't seem to mind and it helped me bridge my two careers.
ReplyDeleteAll that said, CD was one of the scarier responsibilities of my new job, one that I probably put off longer than I should have. Now I'm having a ball. If I could have done a TARDISesque forward flash to this post I would have calmed down a little. Thank you!
I thank you for this wonderful piece. I know it's been a while since you wrote it...I can't read every blog I'm interested in. But I just wanted to thank you for being such a "mensch". You are seriously the first person I've read in a long time who says to be kind just for the sake of being kind. Awesome.
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