This week we learned about two valuable tools in Collection Management: information needs assessments and collection development policies.
An information needs assessment helps to determine what the information needs of your clients are. It is essentially a survey aimed at gathering information about the needs of library patrons. It can cover topics such as information resources the patron wants to see in the library, to what library facilities need improvement and so on. There is no use in investing resources into new computers if most of your patrons have laptops and would prefer better seating instead. If most of your clients come in at night there is a greater need for staff on the night shift. An information needs assessment brings attention to issues such as these and allows you to plan accordingly to the changing needs of your clientele.
A collection development policy is a multifaceted document that is useful to the library staff, library patrons and library board of directors. At its core it is a document that contains guidelines for what resources are selected and deselected for the collection. As such it also provides the board of directors with a guideline for the status of the library collection, as well as a way to measure the performance of their collection development employees. A collection policy also gives the clientele of the library a way to gauge what type of library they are choosing. If the clientele have any complaints about the inclusion or exclusion of certain information resources then a part of the collection development policy is also devoted to dealing with complaints such as these.
Both the information needs assessment and the collection development policy are valuable tools for any library or information center. For any customer service facility it is imperative that the staff and managers are aware of the needs of their customers so that they can focus their efforts and budget towards meeting those needs and hopefully attracting more customers. In the case of libraries and information centers this is doubly important, as they both serve to enhance the availability of information and knowledge to their communities.
Likewise a collection development policy is of the utmost importance, as the information needs of patrons are forever changing. One of the difficult things about knowledge is that it is difficult to un-know it. Once a library patron has absorbed all they can from an information resource the likelihood of them needing that same resource again dramatically decreases. This creates an ever-changing information need, which contributes to the need for updating collection development policies.
In our country I would like to believe that information needs assessments and collection policies are implemented everywhere, but I don't believe that that is the case. Doing an information needs assessment takes time and effort, two resources which some of the libraries in our country might not have. If they are able to conduct the assessment then there is also the possibility that they are not granted the funding to act on the information they collect, especially during this time of pandemic where funding is more urgently needed in the health care sector. As for collection development policies, there is a possibility that they exist but have not been updated - especially since this is also the case for libraries in more developed countries.
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