http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1413 Allerton Park Institute Proceedings (no. 3, 1956); Edited by Donald E. Strout and F. Thelma Eaton http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1448 Summary Lancour, Harold The Institute was soundly based on the belief that collection development is the central function of librarianship. A library by definition is a collection of materials. To bring together a collection which furthers the objectives of the institution and meets the needs and purposes of the library's clientele is the primary purpose of the librarian. While it is true that modern librarianship gives great and proper emphasis to reader services, the success of these services depends in large measure upon the quality of the collection around which they are built. One of the speakers, Elizabeth Nesbitt, drew attention to the aptness of the figure of "building a collection" with its connotation of an architectural construction. Such a construction is planned, it is orderly, and its results are functional. This idea became,in a way, the theme of the conference. Collection development (Libraries) Book selection http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1447 Censorship and Selection: The Librarian as a Trustee of the Public's Right to Know Bixler, Paul At any given moment of time in any individual library the book collection is the payoff on the librarian's performance as selector (or as censor). The book collection is the basic evidence of the librarian's professional competence in choosing the materials he sets before the public. It indicates whether he understands the community his library is designed to serve, whether he is aware of public demand that is latent as well as that which is blatant, whether he has courage to reject as well as to buy, whether he sees the whole forest while he is selecting some of the trees. The book collection is the eating of the pie of selection. Yet it is so intimate and individual a matter both for the librarian and for the library user, it varies so in its content from library to library, that it is impossible to deal with it practically or in detail except in an extended report on a particular library. I doubt that I am competent to discuss the book collection in any library but my own. In any case there is not time to describe a total book collection even of a few thousand volumes. What I can do here is to discuss some of the conditions surrounding selection. This will mean giving somewhat more attention to the attitudes of the public and of librarians than to individual books. Books are important in themselves but as volumes on a library shelf they are, first of all, significant in relation to use and potential use within a particular community. Librarians are also to be seen within a social context, and before considering some of the details of their job as selectors, suppose we look at them in longer perspective. Collection development (Libraries) Book selection http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1446 The Role of the Wholesaler Busse, David The past weeks have been full of campaign talk about the High Road and the Low Road. Although I am connected with one of the wholesalers, I expect to follow the High Road and stay away from competitive statements. However, you will have to forgive the illustrations which I draw from my own experience. Since we are taking the High Road, I believe you would like to know where we are going, and so I have divided our trip into four parts: First - We will define the wholesaler. Second - We will indicate the purposes, or functions, of the wholesaler. Third - We will take up the problems of the wholesaler. Fourth - We will point out the role of the wholesaler and indicate ways in which we, the librarian and the wholesaler, can cooperate to meet our common goals. Collection development (Libraries) Book selection http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1445 The Role of the State Library in the Development Brigham, Harold F. I. Introduction Specific examples of requests received by the Indiana State Library illustrate the important part that a state library plays in the development of local library collections . 1. A request from a small library for help in weeding its total collection, including a large accumulation of dust- covered gifts in a dirt- floor basement. 2. A request, from a small library that is preparing to move into a handsome new building, for help in weeding and reorganizing its total collection. It was realized that the uninviting appearance of its book stock would detract from the appearance of the new quarters and that the location of the various types and classes of materials on the open shelves called for reorganization in order to facilitate use by public and staff. 3. A request from a medium- size county library for aid in its appeal to the State Tax Commission when the local Tax Adjustment Board had seriously reduced the. new library tax levy. A substantial increase in funds had been proposed for developing the library's collection of books and other materials, long needed. The increase was justified by the recent doubling of the county's assessed valuation resulting from the construction of a huge regional power plant in the county. The State Library was able to help in effecting a satisfactory compromise settlement by personal consultation with the Tax Commission. 4. A request from a new State Commission on the Aged and Aging that the State Library prepare an exhibit and reading list for a state conference to be staged by the Commission. This led to the library's collaborating with the Commission in dispatching a special letter to all libraries of the state, enclosing the reading list and urging special attention to the development of services for older people and for local agencies working in this field, with helpful suggestions. Collection development (Libraries) Book selection http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1444 Non-Book Materials, Libraries and Librarians Goldstein, Harold Writing of one kind or another has been with us about 7,000 to 10,000 years; pictures, cave paintings, etc., as much as 50, 000 years. It has been only 35 years since educational motion pictures became a physical reality in the classroom; we have had cheap film, slides, etc. , only for the past 20 years. We have been using print in one or another form for only 500 years, and it too is now appearing in vastly changed and machinery- dependent forms. We are talking here about non-book materials: visual aids and aural aids, and the combination aural /visual such as motion pictures and television. A sine qua non of this definition, but not always so stated, is that all types of materials are necessary to us in our libraries as aids and supplements to the experiences stirred up and made alive by book materials. Therefore, in talking about non-book materials in libraries, I shall treat them as if they were as common to us as books, since I see no reason for their inclusion as part of our working tools if they are not considered as basic and vital for their particular purposes as are books for the things books can do. Let me pretend that for the next three or so paragraphs I am talking to an audio/visual class, and that I am presenting to them a part of the story as to why it is important to consider audio/visual materials in the learning process. Collection development (Libraries) Book selection http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1443 Periodicals and Documents Lightfoot, Helen At mid-20th century any librarian must be impressed with one need in particular- -the need to choose wisely in order to keep the library collection for which he is responsible within a practicable size for giving the best possible service to his patrons. Elimination in selection requires the knowledge of and the intelligent uss of available tools and of the local community needs as well as more courage than is exercised in quantitative acquisition. Certainly with the quantity of material available in both periodical and document form the need for intelligent selection is imperative. It is the more imperative because you as the librarian are the agent for bringing together the materials containing the information and the people wanting the information. Yours is the further duty of making the people want the material you are able to supply. Thus an informed community is in a large measure your responsibility. Today periodicals and government publications provide some of the best sources for reliable and timely information on current affairs, both domestic and international, on developments in research in all fields of knowledge, and in improved methods for carrying on the common tasks of everyday living. In many cases only the government has sufficient resources for carrying out a survey of such magnitude as that of the decennial census for example, the results of which are issued as government publications. Collection development (Libraries) Book selection http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1442 Paperback Books -- Boon or Bane? Strout, Donald E. The scene is a publishers' partyand the central figures a man in a tweedy sports coat, puffing at a pipe, and a pleasantly plump matron, balancing a glass in her hand. "Tell me, " she gushes brightly, "Are you paper-back or hardcover ? "--Thus the New Yorker, with customary urbanity, recently paid its respects to an aspect of the contemporary publishing scene that to some is a revolution and to others merely revolting. All of this business of publishing paperbacks started quite a while back and is not, one must hasten to point out, exclusively American, nor indeed, exclusively 20th century. Paperbacks have doubtless existed, in one form or another, for 2000 years or so. But for our purposes, a point of welldocumented origin seems to be the famed Tauchnitz Edition series of British and American authors, started in Leipzig in 1841 by Bernhard (later Baron) Tauchnitz, and running ere its final days into something over 5, 000 titles. This, and Philip Reclam's Universal Bibliothek, started in 1867 and running to 6, 000 titles (with sales of over 30, 000, 000) in fifty years, are the most famous of the foreign series in paper covers prior to the 20th century. Interestingly enough, at almost the same time Tauchnitz was beginning his highly successful venture on the Continent, we witness (in 1831) the start of what is considered to be the first paperback series in America--The Library of Useful Knowledge, published by the Boston Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge. Collection development (Libraries) Book selection http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1441 The Adult Book Collection Cushman, Jerome Ideas containing overgeneralizations must not be allowed to obscure the necessity for stating and coming to grips with some of the specific problems of the book collection of the small and medium- sized library. The smooth waters of library philosophy may belie the hidden reefs once the test of practicality is made. It must be mentioned that this paper will not presume to have the answers. It will only seek to measure a few everyday library dilemmas against a point of view. It hopes to pose some questions, let some possible answers hover tentatively, and pray that the members of this Institute exert their godlike possibilities and help bring order from the writer's chaos. Collection development (Libraries) Book selection http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1440 The library collection at mid-twentieth century Downs, Robert B. In all of nature, change is the most constant factor. Throughout manmade civilizations, likewise, change from era to era is continual and inevitable. How amazing it is, therefore, to realize that the product with which librarians are primarily concerned--the book- -has remained substantially unchanged in form for the past two thousand years. Certainly, since the introduction of typography five hundred years ago, variations in the book's format have been relatively minor. I suspect that we would be hard put to it to name any other object in common use today of which this fact would be true. But, we are now living in the twentieth century, a period during which the rate of technological change has been tremendously accelerated. No longer can we complacently assume that the book world, which is so vital to us as librarians, will go on for the next five centuries, or even the next twentyfive years, without profound modifications. Collection development (Libraries) Book selection http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1416 Books for children and young people Nesbitt, Elizabeth Children's librarians, traditionally and actually, have always felt that an essential part of their work is to broaden a child's interests in reading and to deepen his appreciation of quality in books. In other words, it is not enough to give a child the book he wants. He must also be unobtrusively persuaded to want the best books we have. There is another realization which, taken in conjunction with the one just mentioned, reveals the first pattern to be discerned in the building of a book collection for children. This is the recognition of the fact that generation after generation of children respond to the same books, and that, as the years pass, the ephemeral, the insufficiently worth-while, the expedient book is winnowed. Collection development (Libraries) Book selection Children's libraries