College and Research Libraries GEORGE M. JENKS Book Selection: An Approach for Small and Medium-Sized Libraries Book selection is an essential element of librarianship, and all li- brarians should participate. Approval plans provide one means of participation by all the staff, partkularly in the small and medium- sized library. The article is a description of the process of current and retrospective book selection in a medium-sized library. This proc- ess is a cooperative undertaking of classroom faculty and librarians. The problems raised and solved by library participation are discussed. WITH THE GROWING acceptance of ap- proval plans, libraries will have to try a different approach to their book selec- tion policies. The receipt of books on a regular basis forces the small and me- dium-sized library to reconsider some time-honored practices, such as alloca- tion of funds to departments and selec- tion by classroom faculty. I start with the premise that an ap- proval plan is a desirable means of ac- quiring books. There are those who would take issue with this, but I think the problem is in the mechanics of par- ticular plans, not the principle.1 An ap- proval plan enables a library to acquire a large part of current book production for inspection, a very useful first step in book selection. The question of who selects the books and how much money is allocated to a department often raises problems of power and status and causes conflict be- tween departments and the library and departments. Formulas for allocation of funds to departments are based on a variety of factors , but the overriding factor should be the need that the col- Mr. Jenks is university librarian, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. 28 I lege or university has for a particular book in order to satisfy curriculum re- quirements. The number of students and the number of faculty are minor considerations. If a university offers a degree in biology, the books that are necessary are necessary whether there is one student or forty. Fortunately at my own institution we do not allocate the book budget by department. We do keep a record of expenditures by sub- ject, partly as an insurance policy against the time when a department may feel it is being done out of its fair share of the book budget. For obvious reasons, when money is tight, this prob- lem worsens. The question of who selects is a touchy problem when the faculty mem- ber feels that any delegation of book selection to a librarian involves a loss of status and/or admission that he is not competent to select material in his field. The only way to resolve this problem is to have librarians who are competent and can work with departments. One can ask each department to appoint one member of its faculty as a "library rep- resentative" to serve as departmental li- aison with the library. Each librarian is assigned a section of the Library of Congress classification as his responsibil- ity for book selection and weeding. It is necessary for a librarian to cover sev- eral departments, since there are not as many librarians as departments. This has obvious drawbacks since a library usually cannot provide specialists in ev- ery field, and in some cases there is no one interested in a particular subject. Science specialists are difficult to come by. Those people assigned a field in which they have no expertise must de- pend on good communication with the departments concerned. In the area of current book selection our library receives books weekly on ap- proval. These are placed on shelves in the acquisitions department by rough LC classification (supplied by the ven- dor) and every two weeks library repre- sentatives are sent notices of the display and asked to come to the library to make selections during a five-day period. Selections are made by signature on the multiple-order form placed in each book. The books are left on the shelves one more day so that the librarians may make additional selections and also see what books have been chosen. This pro- vides an additional guide to departmen- tal interests. This system works, and its ideal of two-way communication between library and departments is good, but it does not function as smoothly as it sounds. There are two principal reasons for this. First, not all library representatives take their responsibilities seriously. Some departments appoint the junior member of the department as library representative. This can mean the rep- resentative changes each year and con- tinuity and sometimes ability is lost. On the other hand, in some cases the young faculty member is well acquainted with the literature of his field and indeed is even more current than senior members. In some cases the department head doesn't trust book selection to anyone else and tries to do it all himself, with the result that it may not get done, the Book Selection I 29 chairman's duties being what they are. Some departments encourage all mem- bers to make selections. This, we feel, is good because one man may not be in- terested in or know the literature out- side his own narrow field. The other reason that the selection procedure does not always measure up to the ideal is that, sad to say, some li- brarians are not concerned. My feeling is that book selection touches the essence of librarianship and all librarians should be involved in it. There is an un- derstandable tendency for some to place other duties first and book selection last, especially when there is much to be done. Also many academic librarians have never been involved in book selec- tion, since it has usually been a faculty prerogative or limited to bibliographers or acquisitions librarians. The question of retrospective pur- chases is somewhat more difficult be- cause the range of possibilities is much greater, and there are not nearly enough funds to buy everything wanted. At the moment our approach has not been sys- tematized to the point necessary for a thorough review of every classification. We have used Books for College Li- braries as a basic minimum guide, and each librarian has ordered the books thought necessary to our collection. Be- yond this we accept requests from the faculty and distribute them to the staff for review. This is necessary, of course, if the librarian is to know what is being requested and what is being purchased in his area of responsibility. "Deselection," or weeding of the col- lection, is often difficult. The faculty may not see the need to discard books that are not used or are superseded. We consider weeding important if we are to have a vital, useful, and used collec- tion. Since we are not a research library we should not attempt to keep forever everything we have acquired. We will leave that to Harvard. We have to guard against building for the faculty alone. 30 I College & Research Libraries • January 1972 The students come first. However, we have had some success in weeding. We have asked library representatives to ex- amine the books in their subject area and recommend ones for discard. In some cases the librarians have made pre- liminary selections for discard and asked the representative to make recom- mendations from these. This is more ef- fective because the initiative is in the library and psychologically, the faculty member feels relieved of the responsi- bility of discarding a book. When we receive a large number of gifts, we arrange them by subject and ask the library representatives to select those for retention. For the small num- ber of day-to-day gifts, the order librari- an asks the librarian concerned to de- cide what to keep. The librarian may in turn consult with the library repre- sentative. Since no expenditure is in- volved, and the titles will appear in the monthly accessions list, the main reason for consulting the library representative is to keep him informed. This method perhaps approaches the point whereby the reference function, the book selection function, and the cataloging function are combined, with one person doing all three. 2 We have not attempted to go this far. I think the combination of functions is not always desirable, although I believe that all li- brarians should at some time in their ca- reers have the experience of cataloging. Involving all librarians in book selec- tion has two worthwhile side effects. It broadens a person's view of the library, and it provides a means of contact with the faculty. This latter effect may be im- portant where faculty status is still an issue. It may seem as if the library rep- resentatives are doing a great deal of work and making most of the pecisions, but it is a case of a shift of decision- making from one group to a sharing by two groups for the ultimate benefit of the library. REFERENCES 1. For a contrary view see Roscoe Rouse, "Automation Stops Here: A Case for Man-Made Book Collections," CRL 31: 147-54 (May 1970). 2. See Frank A. Lundy, Kathryn R. Renfro, and Esther M. Shubert, "The Dual As- signment: Cataloging and Reference: A Four-Year Review of Cataloging in the Divisional Plan," Library Resources & Technical Services 3:167-88 (Summer 1959).