The task is to give response to each question.

Task

There are 6 questions below. The task is to give response to each question.
Around 150 words for each response.
Q1:Patron driven acquisition

This idea, that books can be purchased/aquired when needed by patrons, intruiges me. My old high school library ran a version of this for ‘General Reading’ Material in the late 90’s/early naughties, where there was a wish list book, and any book with five requests was sent off for approval (still had to go through library management for censorship reasons I imagine), and that book would almost always be aquired. It seems to me a good way to run a library with a large general reader population, such as a school library or public library, where some works (best seller lists and such) are aquired automatically, but others are only ordered after a certain amount of interest. I could also imagine search results being used to fill gaps in the collection, ie: we get a lot of searches for books/other works about the french revolution, but only currently have one book in this area. Due to this being a high patron interest area, it may be time to look into some more general works about this historical topic.

Q2: Components of a Collection Development Policy

How important do you think it is to include the Community Profile/Geopgraphy section that appears in some Public Library Collection Development Policies (CDP)?

Some of the CDPs include this and others dont, why for some and not others?

Q3: Outsourcing selection of resources – impact on professional roles?

I used to think that one of the most satisfying tasks in a library would be collection development, selection and acquisition of resources (OK I’ll be honest, buying books!). With the function of many libraries diversifying away from the housing of collections towards providing access to resources and information, as well as a range of community programs, some organisations opt to outsource the selection of resources and the associated ‘back end’ work (State Library of NSW, 2010). What impact do you think this might be having on the profession? Are some librarians finding their skills being made redundant? Does this mean there are greater or growing opportunities for employment in organisations to which the tasks are outsourced? (publishers etc). Looking forward to your comments.

Q4: Institutional respositories – how do we involve users

This week our module includes thinking and reading about institutional repositories. We’ve already learnt that institutional repositories are increasingly important resources for assessing and accessing research. Our reading this week (Drake) reminds us that librarians take a leadership role in planning, building and managing these repositories. But these repositories are undeniably dependant on user involvement.

How can we engage users, and motivate them to contribute and maintain insittutional repositories? Do you have experience in this area? What were the challenges and what worked well?

Q5: Personal Digital Collection And Foramt

Nowadays, almost everyone had its own PC, and there are many data stored in the PC. Do you have any kind of digital collection? What is your normal keeping practice, such as standard format, naming, etc?Any aspects of your normal practice can apply to the library?

Besides, as some of the old materials fade out, like VHS which was not popular at now, even young people did not know what is VHS. The supporting materials of VHS became less and less. So digitize the VHS maybe the better way to keep the video. Therefore, any other type of material you think of whether it should keep in physical form or digital form and why?

Q6: Quantifying value

A great deal of library funding is dependent on how ‘valuable’ library users and library funding bodies perceive the provision of library services. The value of physical things is reflected in the amount of money it costs us to purchase the thing (a system which can often fail to include the true cost of ‘externalities’ such as environmental degradation or human labour). But what about intangible things like the pleasure library patrons experience when they read a new title, or the gratitude felt by an individual after being helped with a reference query, or the excitement a child feels while they suddenly realize they know all the words and all the actions to ‘Dingle Dangle Scarecrow’?

Can you think of, or have you had experience with a successful (or unsuccessful) alternative approach to demonstrate the ‘value’ of a library services or another information organization?

What did this approach look like and do you think it was an effective means of quantifying library value?