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Collection Development

Introduction

These standards cover collection management policies, budgeting, professional review sources, and access to government documents.

Standards

I. Standard A
"The board adopts a collection management policy that it reviews every three years. The policy addresses the use of electronic resources. The library submits its collection development policy to the Montana State Library."

A collection management policy can help the library provide a balanced collection. The following links might be helpful if you are developing a new policy or updating your current one.

The Montana State Library recognizes that some of the new standards require public libraries to have in place practices which formerly were not required and may take significant time and effort on the part of the library to put in place. Thus, it would unfair to expect your library to complete everything that is required by the end of June 2007. In light of that, we are interpreting this standard's three year cycle to begin July 1, 2007. You may check that your library is in compliance if you plan on meeting the standard and recognize that you must begin the process of meeting it in July 2007.

II. Standard C
"The library uses at least one professionally recognized review source."

The following list isn't exhaustive, but might help you understand what Professional Review Source the State Library considers acceptable.

Booklist
Library Journal
Montana: Magazine of Western History
New York Review of Books
New York Times Book Review
YALSA
School Library Journal
Horn Book
SBF - Science, Book, & Film
Book Links
InfoTrac - search for reviews
Reviews from Newspapers
Reviews from magazines the library subscribes to - Nation, Science, Reader's Digest

III. Standard D
"The library provides access to federal, state and local government documents that are appropriate to its community."

You will be meeting this standard if you assist patrons with finding government documents. These documents may be online or you may have them at your library. You do not need to have every type of document available, but you may want to have local government documents accessible. For example if your community is near an EPA Superfund site, you may want to have relevant documents at your library. Otherwise you can use the Internet and Interlibrary Loan to give your patrons access to this type of information.