Evaluating public library collections: why do it,

and how to use the results

American Libraries, May 1994
Every library's constituency needs periodic proof that their investment is paying off.
Public librarians know the value of building dynamic collections, and they spend considerable time and
money selecting useful material. Although collection building is based on the concept of the public
library as a public good, many librarians are still wrestling with the ramifications of that premise.
If an institution is a public good, we must be able to prove to the taxpaying public that it is. But how
can we do this? One of the ways librarians can prove the worth of collections is by systematic
evaluation against objective criteria.
Evaluation, the process of the '90s
If planning was the process of the '80s, evaluation is the process of the '90s. Three forces have
prompted this need for evaluation: accountability, cooperation, and the economy.
Accountability: Public money supports public libraries. Members of the public are held accountable in
their own lives for their actions, including spending money, so they expect the same from their
institutions. And this is right and proper. As citizens we want to know where our money goes, how it
gets there, and what it buys. We hold government officials accountable for how tax money is collected,
contracted, and consumed. Libraries need to show how their expenditures of tax dollars benefit the
public. Evaluation helps do that.
Cooperation: Networks cannot succeed unless each partner shares some portion of its holdings with
the others. When two or more entities join together to form a larger group, each one must enter the
agreement with knowledge of itself as well as of the other participants. In setting up cooperative
organizations among libraries, participants must be aware of their capabilities and demonstrate their
worth. It is hard to strike a bargain if you don't know the bottom line.
In recent years, resource sharing and networking have increased in importance. Public libraries that
have not evaluated their collections and do not know their worth are in a poor position to coexist
successfully in partnership with other libraries.
When the public service arms of libraries automate and network, the impact of evaluation will be even
more critical. The determination of new groups to be formed by combining smaller units will be based
chiefly on the knowledge gained through collection evaluation.
The Economy: The impetus toward greater accountability and more cooperation can be laid almost
entirely at the doorstep of the economic environment of the '90s.

When the economy expanded in the '50s and '60s, all institutions--including libraries--thought they,
too, could expand indefinitely.
In the '70s, when budget increases began to taper off and costs began rising more rapidly, libraries
began suffering withdrawal symptoms as the years of largess ended. In the '80s, budget restrictions
intensified. The entire decade was spent gathering information to make better decisions in order to
make the most of severely limited resources.
The time has come for implementation. A still-stringent economy is forcing us to be decisive and
determined. Evaluation no longer is an option, but an essential part of decision-making processes.
Evaluation options
Once public libraries decide to evaluate their collections, there are several possible ways to do the job.
The evaluation can be an internal project, accomplished by the library's personnel; it can be contracted
out to consultants who specialize in this kind of work; or it can combine in-house staff and consultants.
Each option has advantages and disadvantages.
Do-it-yourself, with a little help from your friends: A public library can undertake its own evaluation
either by assigning the task to one or a few staff members, or by involving larger numbers of people-staff members, administrators, and even members of the public.
A do-it-yourself evaluation does not require paying fees to consultants and avoids the necessity for
public approval of such special expenditures. The cost of the evaluation can be hidden in the ordinary
course of paying staff salaries. But no director or library board should think that sidestepping
consulting fees means that the do-it-yourself evaluation is either cheap or free.
Internal evaluation costs are very difficult to control. Every minute spent on the project by each staff
member involved is a twofold cost measured in salary-plus-benefits for the time plus the
postponement of the work they would do if they weren't doing the evaluation. Depending on who does
it and how long they take, a do-it-yourself evaluation could cost more or less than an equivalent job
done by outside specialists.
Library staff members are familiar with their community and its information needs. They need not
spend time, as consultants must, preparing for the evaluation by getting to know community
demographics and speculating about their implications. Taking part in an evaluation is a means of
getting staff to buy into desirable collection goals and objectives. But library personnel--who often live
in the communities where they work--are more likely than outsiders to be defensive about local
problems. They have a stake in upholding particular views. When the same people who selected
materials are asked as evaluators to decide whether those selections were good or bad, they may find
it hard to be dispassionate and objective.
Using library staff allows the evaluation to proceed slowly, in a part-time manner. An internal

evaluation can be designed to suit the library's individual staff and budget situation. The person who is
best suited for the job or who has the most training can be chosen to do the job or coordinate a team
effort.
Using consultants--Judgment Day: Some advantages of contracting with outside specialists to perform
the evaluation already are clear. Consultants usually do the job quickly, for a specified, controllable
amount of money, and the regular work of the library does not suffer. Consultants are knowledgeable
about systematic data collection and analysis. Because they are not involved in day-to-day selection
and programming decisions, they have no particular bias. They will present library officials with a
detailedd report as well as suggestions or recommendations for the future.
Some disadvantages of hiring consultants are also clear. Consultants do not know the community the
way members of the staff do. Once the job is done and consultants are paid, they leave, with no
guarantee that a stake in improving the collections has been developed within the library staff.
Combining staff with consultants: Is it the best of both worlds? It sounds too good to say the best
alternative is to hire consultants to work with staff, but it can be ideal. To succeed, however, the
consultants must be able to engage the enthusiasm and good will of the staff. They cannot just issue
orders, but must continually supervise progress. Consultants bring their special expertise and
objectivity to evaluation. Using outsiders insures that data interpretations are unbiased and that
mismatches between collections and communities are not glossed over or ignored.
The downside of using consultants with staff is cost. It is also likely to take longer than using
consultants alone. In an era of cost cutting it may be hard to justify the added expenditures without a
perceived payoff in the long run.
Problems uncovered by an evaluation
A proper evaluation should reveal any mismatch between currently held collections and the people
they are supposed to serve. Communities change, and so do bodies of literature. Selections that might
have served well 10 or 20 years ago may not be relevant today or represent a good cross section of
materials available.
Other common collection problems that show up when evaluation is done include the following:
* peculiarities in placement of materials that cause problems for browsers--these peculiarities do not
bother librarians, who are so used to dealing with these quirks they no longer see them;
* differences in the way individual librarians budget, allocate, select, and/or weed;
* gaps in the existing written documentation for collection policies and procedures;
* communication gaps among members of the staff, the administration, and the library's board.

An objective evaluation should expose these and other problems as well as document the adequacy of
holdings in particular subject areas or for particular audiences. It is critical that librarians be ready to
accept objective evidence that problems exist so they can get to work on solutions, and not jump to
offer excuses or explanations in order to play down the importance of the problems and show that they
aren't worth addressing. This raises a most important issue of follow-up to the collection evaluation:
How to use the information it provides in making decisions.
Preserve or pitch?
Evaluation data should be used wisely, because decisions with far-reaching implications have to be
made. What is important in making collection development decisions? Four focuses are relevant: the
community, material use, shelf allocations, and user views of individual items on the shelf.
The community: Enormous amounts of both anecdotal and statistical information on almost every
community have been and continue to be collected. Census data, which reports population by age,
gender, ethnic group, language, racial group, economic status, and educational level, should inform
selectors' forecasts of which formats of material the public might prefer, which subjects might be of
interest, and what quantities of materials --both numbers of titles and multiple copies--should be
purchased. Using both census data and in-house surveys, librarians can better understand their
community and use that knowledge to shape collections that increase use.
Material use: Statistics on the use of materials are important in collection decision making. Materials
that circulated well in the immediate past are likely to circulate well in the near future, so more of that
material might be purchased; materials that didn't circulate well in the immediate past are not likely to
do better and should not be purchased.
Circulation reports from automated systems should provide this information easily; however, many
librarians now realize they cannot automatically produce the statistics they want because they were
not programmed into their libraries' systems.
Shelf allocations: General observations should be made about shelf space relationships, e.g., how
much space is devoted to fiction and how much to nonfiction? Does it match the intent of local
policies? How is space divided among various subject groups? If materials in a certain subject area
always seem to be out, buying more is a good decision. How much space is given to magazines and
journals? How big are the record, CD, or video collections? Are records always in, and should they be
replaced by tapes or CDs? Decisions on formats are as important as decisions on subjects.
User views of the shelves: Librarians should look at the shelves regularly, trying to see them as
patrons do when they come to the library. If the shelves are cluttered with tattered, torn, dirty,
outdated, or unpleasant looking materials, they are off-putting. These materials are candidates for
weeding, binding, or repair. Preservation decisions can be made only through an item-by-item
examination.
Patrons tend to look mainly at eye level and a little above and below, so items on higher and lower
shelves are easily overlooked. Moving materials around on the shelves can be very beneficial to their

circulation. Dark corners are uninviting and materials shelved there are at a disadvantage. Lighting
can be improved or materials can be shifted.
Universal rules of thumb
Here are three universal rules of thumb for deciding how to proceed with a collection evaluation:
1. If you want to energize the library staff and make them feel part of the whole process of collection
development, then it would be wise to use the whole staff or as many of them as possible to do the
evaluation. However, doing it this way risks objectivity, time, and hidden costs, and some current
services to patrons will have to be sacrificed.
2. If you want the most objective, unbiased, and nonpartisan view of the collection and a tight rein on
costs, then it is wise to contract with outside consultants for the evaluation. But in doing so you
probably will sacrifice the potential knowledge gained from the evaluation process, which will leave
with the consultants who have no ongoing ties to the library or its community.
3. If you want to involve the staff and keep feedback in the collection development loop, yet insure
more objectivity, the wisest choice (if you can afford the investment) is to have outside consultants
supervise the library's staff in performing the evaluation.
The right decisions are the cement that ties a collection of materials together and turns it into a library.
Information is the key to those decisions.

Abstract
Evaluating its collection can help a public library to demonstrate accountability, cooperate with other
libraries and make the best use of its funds. Evaluation options and use of evaluation information are
discussed.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1994 American Library Association.
http://www.ala.org

Source Citation
Futas, Elizabeth, and Sheila S. Intner. "Evaluating public library collections: why do it,
and how to use the results." American Libraries May 1994: 410+. Student
Resources in Context. Web. 27 Oct. 2015.
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