collection management to support learnings

Collection Management to Support Learning

Presentors:Damaso, Annabelle

Malones, MyleneTansiongco, Kevin Conrad

Torres, Mark Joseph

Introduction• Students judge the quality of a library by the

extent to which it supports their learning resource requirements during the course of their studies.

• Adequate access to library facilities (in terms of both time and location); adequate resourcing of libraries to cater needs of students and teaching staff; and adequate staffing and information technology facilities, were all highlighted by the study to support their learning's.

Introduction

• The strategies which are adopted to meet student expectations depend on organizational contingency factors, and no ideal solutions can be prescribed: each organization should, through informed judgements, find its own answers.

Undergraduate and Post Graduate Needs

• The concept of collection management to support learning goes beyond the availability of material.

• It includes the structure of loan periods, borrowing entitlements, the amount and location of study space, access to help and advice, opening hours, library layout, guiding and remote access.


• The availability of word processing, spreadsheet, and computer-assisted learning packages may also be important.

• In order to support student learning, the collection should reflect back to students the range of learning outcomes which have been specified in the courses study.


• Thus material on reading lists should be available, as should a suitable range of resources to support research for assignments.

• Students should also have the opportunity to learn and to develop skills in completing self-directed study elements of courses.


• The library must be fully involved in the academic process at all levels.

• Senior library staff must be able to represent the library’s interest and concerns to the senior managers of the university, and highlight the impact of any changes in teaching and learning practice.


• Customer feedback should be used to identify other areas of concern.

• The library should be able to interpret institutional pedagogic goals, and probably those of individual faculties, schools and departments.

• Librarians are very effective in analysing user needs and separating needs and wants, it can be easy to focus on only part of the picture.

Partnership with Academic Staff

• Effective support for learning requires a partnership between academic staff and the library.

• It is essential to establish a clear sense of the extent and nature of provision, so that guidelines can be drawn up and mutual understanding develops.

Supporting Teaching and Research

• Developments in teaching methods have intensified the use of journals and monographs for teaching purposes, further blurring such distinctions.

• This is particularly so in cases where such material is used in projects and dissertations in final year undergraduate or taught in Master courses.

Quality Assessment

• It examine the students learning experience and measure student achievement against the aims and objectives set by the subject provider.

• They address the wide range of influences that shape the experiences and achievements of students and include the full breadth of teaching, learning and student assessment activities.

Student Feedback

• Library managers must ensure that feedback from students is gathered systematically and used to inform the planning and management process.

• The library and its activities are at the heart of institutional activity, but they do not form the only critical relationship in the university or college.

Student Feedback

• As well as working to achieve partnership with academic staff, librarians need to establish links with students and their representatives.

• This may done through consultation, focus group, surveys and analysis of management information.

Collection Management in a Mass Higher Education System

• The student population is changing in many ways. As well as the net expansion in numbers and increased age range, the distribution of students across different levels of course has changed.

• Academic library managers and all staff who are involved in collection management face the problem of meeting demand from what usually insufficient resource base.

Collection Management in a Mass Higher Education System

• The concept of a perfect library – where everything is available to every user when that item is required – is changing. It is changing, not merely in the sense of access vs. Holdings, but towards planning structured access to material.

• It focuses on the ideal of maximum exploitation of resources.

Collection Management Principles

• Balance means that a range of needs can be supported, from first-level assignment to independent study and research.

• Scope is the way which one subject area is studied within the institution may affect the kind of material needed.

• Appropriateness may be measured in terms of format, level, language and cost.

Collection Management Principles

• Access mechanisms such as structured loan periods and the provision of multiple copies, as well as wider issues of access to the service and to its resources.

Quality in Collection Management

• The size of the collection is not the only indicator of effectiveness in supporting learning.

• There may be a correlation between high expenditure on libraries and high student achievement, but it is difficult to prove that students get better results from better libraries.

Quality in Collection Management

• The structure of quality assessment visits implicitly accept that learning resources and the management of the service may be more important than numbers of books.

• The library must be committed to effective and efficient resource management.

RELATIONSHIPS

• The collection management process relies on a series of relationships.

• It may be helpful to consider who are the other stakeholders.

Relationships with Library Users

• Relationships between the library and its users benefit from transparent management of services- so that and students understand, for example, policy on the provision of multiple copies. Users also appreciate swift action by the library to purchase additional stock in areas under heavy pressure- perhaps by using contingency funds in the budget.

Relationships with Library Users

• User support is also important: the service at information or enquiry desks, user education and information skill training.

Relationships with other Institutions

• Links with other higher education institutions are becoming increasingly important.

• Collaboration was recommended in the Dearing report and has an increasingly important position on the Chief Librarians agenda.

Strategies for Diverse and Expanding Populations

• Academic libraries must develop strategies to deal with the increasingly diverse higher education population.

• This may mean redefining their services and facilities and the way they are made available to their client groups.

• Longer opening hours mean higher potential stock availability, but at a price on staffing and operational overheads.

Strategies for Diverse and Expanding Populations

• Increasing resource availability.• Circulation policy to have differential

borrowing periods, depending on the mode of study.

• Enhance levels of service.

Short Loan Collections

• It is an area where high-demand materials is kept in a separate collection, either adjacent to or behind the issue desk or counter.

• Photocopiers and some study space will also be available nearby.

• Borrowing entitlements are lower than for the main collections and there are usually higher fines for the late return of material.

Short Loan Collections

• Short Loan Collections is in concept a device for coping with and rationing demand for an identified range of material.

• Open-access collections enable students to fetch material from the shelves themselves and either read it in the library, photocopy it or take it to a special desk to be issued.

Electronic Solutions

• Items available in an electronic short loan collection could be accessed by multiple users at any one time.

• They could also be accessed through the network, so students are not required to visit the library in person.

Effectiveness of Short Loan• Short loan may be a very specific function

which regulates access to textbooks; in other places a larger collection which supports the majority of taught course reading requirements.

• Use of a SLC appears to be embedded into undergraduate culture, and students need very little persuasion to make any more use of it.

Study Packs • Is a collection of all or most of the key

readings required to support a course.• May consist of journal articles, chapters from

books, exam questions and the lecturer’s own material, all bound together and resold or distributed to students.

• It is a tangible resource which requires no special equipment to use, and which also provides a guarantee of basic provision.

Reading Lists

• It forms the critical connection between teaching and learning strategies in the library.

• Teaching staff compile reading lists either based on what is already available in the library or based n what is relevant to the course they are teaching.

Circulation Policies• Play an important role in managing access to

printed material.• Loan periods.• Borrower entitlement.• Fines and suspension.• Circulation policies may be determined by

library managers, but more usually result from negotiations between the service and the library or learning resources committee.

Management Information from Library Systems

• To provide much quantitative data, since all transactions are recorded.

• This data can be used to establish a clear picture of demand and pressure.

• It also provide information which can be used to assess the performance of the acquisitions and cataloging processes.

ConclusionAn underlying theme is the importance

of the subject librarian. Within any academic library there is an essential role for people who can empathize with the needs of staff and students and interpret their needs and demands into service priorities and deliverables.

Librarians are pragmatic people, who must manage a real situation, as well as aspire towards the ideal.