Day 19, Hour 95

As you may know, in addition to policy and procedure, I have been working on some collection development for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Library + Archives. This is not exactly what you might have in mind when it comes to collection development, as there is no collection yet to analyze; rather, this is the building of a collection. This is my first experience with this, and I think it's been a great experience. I have gotten the opportunity to work on my research and selection skills, which are vitally important to the education of the future librarian. Here are some things I have learned so far:

1. It is very easy to go off on a tangent when searching for materials. In the instance of building a collection, though, tangents can be great! For example, I was searching for some books on The Rolling Stones and came across quite a few Beatles books that I had not yet discovered. I wrote down the titles to go back to later. The danger with tangents, though, is that you can lose your place or forget where you were going. This is why it's so important to keep a notepad in front of you at all times! Do not drop what you are doing; simply jot yourself a note, finish your task, and then revisit your new and interesting find.

2. There is no point at which you are finished with collection development. This can be a tough concept to wrap your head around, especially if you are a goal-oriented person. I could work for countless hours on the books and DVDs lists I am compiling, and as long as materials continue to be created and released and reviewed, I would never be done. As someone who, in the past, has relied on goals in her professional career, I have come up with a solution to this: Create small goals for yourself within a larger project. For instance, each day I hope to find at least three books for each inductee. Sometimes there are less, often there are many more. But at least I know that I have accomplished something I set out to do. Plus, I'll have this awesome list of titles to show for all my work in the end!

(Sidenote: I should have heeded my own warning about losing track of your place after a tangent. Now where was I? The Temptations? But what about that other Beatles book I read about? Did I finish looking into Rolling Stones DVDs?...)

3. Use multiple sources when searching for materials. This is something I have learned from experience. When there are bands that have hundreds of titles related to them, there must be some way of determining which materials are valuable and which are junk. The process I use begins with researching the inductee in The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (Omnibus Press, 2007) and The Mojo Collection: the Ultimate Music Companion (Canongate, 2003). These books have suggested "further reading" lists for most of the individuals with entries. Sometimes The Encyclopedia of Popular Music will have a very long list of titles, but will suggest four or five of the best (according to the editor). After this initial inquiry, I conduct a search for the inductee on Amazon.com (narrowing by "books" or "movies and TV," depending on what I am looking for) and on WorldCat.org. I cross-reference the lists from the two books and from the websites and see which titles seem really valuable. Amazon.com has reviews, and I take these into consideration. I also search reviews on LibraryJournal.com and on GoodReads.com. After weighing all of these factors, I create the list of books or DVDs I would suggest for addition to the collection. (As I compile the Excel spreadsheets, I make sure to record title, author [with authority control from the Library of Congress], publisher, release date, copyright date, ISBN, OCLC record number, series, edition, notes, URL [usually to Amazon.com], and price. This is all in the hopes that the catalogers will be able to purchase and create records for these items quickly and efficiently.)

I am going to end the list here for now. I am sure I will come up with other things I have learned about collection development during my time at the Rock Hall Library, so if you are interested, stay tuned.

Coming up next: Since collection development is my focus for the next couple of weeks, I will possibly not create another blog entry any time soon. Of course, if I come across something interesting or learn something that I think adds value to my practicum experience, I will blog about it.

Thanks for reading, and have a good one!

Laura

Day 15, Hour 75

It has been really interesting and enjoyable to read the responses I've received from my survey. I have compiled all the responses I have gotten so far, and each one has been valuable to my research in some way. For instance, the Southern Folklife Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill has a Search Room that seems similar to what will be the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Library's Archives Reading Room; I took some time to look at their policies on using the room and got some good ideas. Also, I learned from Beth Farrell at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Library that there is a Greater Access card provided to patrons by Clevnet that allows members to use all libraries that belong to the Clevnet consortium. This is definitely something to look into.

Something else that Beth shared with me is that the Innovative Millennium program (an integrated library system that the Rock Hall Library will be using, which is also used by the Kent State University Libraries) has a "Count Use" function in its system that could help the Rock Hall Library to track the usage of items in-house. It seems that the function keeps track of usage when a librarian scans into the system items that she/he sees have been used. This would be great, since there will be no information gathered by circulation records (since items here will not circulate).

I finished out my day by continuing with collection development. I found it interesting and reassuring that when I looked into starred reviews on Overbooked.com for Elvis books, the top two books selections were the two titles I recommended for addition to the collection. (On a quite unrelated yet interesting note, I just realized that the web address for Overbooked.com is www.overbooked.org. How curious...)

Coming up next: The survey responses have slowed, but I am hoping I will continue to receive at least 5 or so more in the next two weeks. I am also looking into other local institutions I can send the survey to, since I received such great information from the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law Library. As always, if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know!

Thanks for reading, and have a good one!

Laura

Day 13, Hour 65

Sorry if you've missed me; I worked from home on the collection development policy on Tuesday. It is going quite well, and I hope it will be helpful for both my Selection and Acquisitions class and the Rock Hall Library.

I have a pretty good policy and procedure survey drafted, and Andy agrees that it will be quite helpful. He provided me with an amazing list of contacts to present the survey to, and hopefully they will be generous enough with their time to participate. I have drafted an email to send out along with the survey and have submitted it to Andy for comments and suggestions. I'm not entirely sure why, but it makes me a little nervous to be sending out a survey to such important professionals!

I have also been continuing with collection development, and have gathered books and videos representing all of the inductees from 1986 and 1987. I am anxious to keep working on this, and would like to hopefully finish another 3-5 years of inductions before my time is up here. Thankfully, the inductees list grows shorter as the years progress; I may be able to finish more than I think I can.

Coming up next: I will hopefully be sending out the survey within the next couple of days or so. I do not want to wait until next week as I want to be sure to compile and review the results very soon. On a side note, if you or someone you know has any comments or suggestions on library policy or would like to participate in the survey, please contact me through this blog. I would graciously accept any input you can offer!

Thanks for reading, and have a good one!

Laura

Day 10, Hour 50

It's amazing how invigorating a break can be! I took some time off from collection development since I've been working on policy, and I am back with an energy you would not believe. As you may remember, before I began my practicum here, I was volunteering by developing a list of videos that would complete the library's collection. For my practicum, I decided to expand this collection development to include books about past inductees. After all, the Rock Hall would not be the Rock Hall without its inductees. Since I now have both lists going, I can work on them simultaneously, which is helping me to fill in holes in each.

When I began to compile the videos list this summer, I had absolutely no experience in collection development. I decided to break down my search into categories, so I started by looking for concert footage. I then moved on to biopics and dramas centered around rock (fictional artists, great soundtracks, etc.). Documentaries were easiest, so I left those for last; interestingly enough, many of the documentary titles I found fell into my lap through looking for the other types of films. I did most of my searching through four sources: WorldCat.org (which is a great site that allows you to search libraries around the world for all kinds of materials), Amazon.com, The Rock & Roll Film Encyclopedia (Applause Theatre and Cinema Books, 2007), and bibliographies in two books (The Encyclopedia of Popular Music [Omnibus Press, 2007] and The Mojo Collection: the Ultimate Music Companion [Canongate, 2000]). I particularly enjoyed browsing through The Rock & Roll Film Encyclopedia because the author gave great depictions of the films and included some of my favorites. Unfortunately, I sometimes have difficulty deciding which films to include, especially in cases where the artist or inductee is in or is the subject of a long list of titles (such as Elvis). In those cases, I tried to look into the films' ratings through Amazon.com and the Internet Movie Database.

Since I was focusing mainly on books based on inductees, I put off the list of videos for quite a while. It was a pleasant surprise, then, to find that I was able to fill in some empty slots in my videos list with films about inductees. This had not been a category that I was previously searching, so I have been able to find a vast amount of films to add to my list. It is really coming along quite well!

It is possible that some of you would like to see what books and films are on my lists, for personal interest reasons, so I would be happy to provide them to anyone who contacts me through my blog. I know that I, personally, have been adding a lot of titles to my Netflix.com list as I go!

Coming up next: As of today, I have reached the half-way point for my required on-site hours. This means that it is time for me to re-evaluate my practicum wiki, to make sure I have tracked all of my logged hours correctly, and to contact my off-site practicum advisor to inform him that I have complete 50 hours. I think we are supposed to discuss my project at that time, as well. I have been really enjoying my experience here, and I cannot wait to continue with policy and collection development for the Rock Hall Library!

Thanks for reading, and have a good one!

Laura