2015 Charleston Library Conference

In a time of ever increasing physical collection space shortages and rapidly evolving higher education institutions, a holistic understanding of the collection lifecycle as well as a strategic approach to collection development and retention as well as stakeholder engagement is needed. Some struggle with what materials to withdraw, especially if there is faculty opposition and how to move forward collaboratively. Leveraging the experience of leading the local culture shift in a large Association of Research Library, the principles, policies and methods required to shift mental models towards what must be retained, facilitating withdrawal decisions, and connecting collection development with ongoing collection management will be explored.
Audience members will leave with:
• An understanding of why collection lifecycle management may be beneficial
• key questions to ask themselves and colleagues when wanting to shift to collection lifecycle management
• an understanding of how existing policies and high-level workflows feed into the collection lifecycle management approach
• an understanding of the practical aspects of implementation,
• a link to a toolkit with policy templates, guides on collection evaluation and stakeholder engagement.
Largely relying on traditional presentation style, a series of poll-like questions will be used to learn about the audience and find resonance in audience members with the presentation content. Further, at the end of each section, a Q&A period will be built in.