Collection Development Policy Statement

Implementation of the mission statement and goals involves a variety of services from the library including management, collection development, information services, programming, and funding. The purpose of this statement is to focus on collection development.

This policy is to guide library staff and to inform the public about the principles of collection development.

OBJECTIVES

Users of Cumberland County Public Library & Information Center should have the highest quality library service available within the constraints imposed by financial limitations. The quality of library service depends to a great extent on the availability of a well-selected, well-maintained collection which provides library materials in adequate numbers in a variety of appropriate formats. Providing such a collection is one of the most important things Cumberland County Public Library & Information Center does.

DEFINITIONS

"Materials" is used for all forms of media and has the widest possible inclusion. "Selection" refers to the decision that must be made to add a given item to the collection. It does not refer to guidance or assisting a library user. "Collection development" refers to the ongoing evaluative process of assessing the materials available for purchase and in making the decisions, first, on their inclusion, and, second, on their retention if they are added.

RESPONSIBILITY FOR MATERIALS SELECTION

Final responsibility for selection lies with the Board of Library Trustees. However, the Board delegates to the Director authority to interpret and guide the application of the policy in making day-to-day selections. The Director will authorize other staff to apply this policy in building collections.

DUTIES OF LIBRARY STAFF

All staff members selecting library materials will be expected to keep the objectives in mind and apply their knowledge, training, and experience in making decisions.

CRITERIA OF SELECTION

No item in a library collection can be indisputably accepted or rejected by any established given guide or standard. However, certain basic principles can be applied as guidelines. Every item must meet one or more of the following criteria as are applicable to its inclusion in the collection.

  • Timeliness and permanence of the materials.
  • Quality of writing, design, illustrations or production.
  • Reputation of the publisher or producer; authority and significance of the author, composer, film maker, etc.
  • Relevance to community needs.
  • Potential and/or known demand for the material.
  • Price.
  • Relative importance in comparison with existing materials in the collection on the same subject.
  • Suitability of subject, style, and level for the intended audience.
  • Availability and suitability of format.
  • Favorable reviews in professionally recognized sources.

SELECTION TOOLS

Selection of materials is done from book reviews in professional library and popular journals and magazines, subject bibliographies, annual lists of recommended titles, publishers' catalogs, customer requests, and salesmen for specific materials. The standard selection tools used by librarians include the following: Library Journal, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, Horn Book, VOYA, Video Librarian and select on-line review sources.

USE OF LIBRARY MATERIALS

The library recognizes that many materials are controversial and that any given item may offend some library user. Selections will not be made on the basis of any anticipated approval or disapproval, but solely on the merits of the work in relation to collection building and to serving the interests of Cumberland County citizens. The use of rare and scarce items of great value may be controlled to the extent required to preserve them from harm, but no further. Responsibility for the reading, listening, and viewing of library materials by children rests with their parents or legal guardians. Selection will not be inhibited by the possibility that materials may inadvertently come into the possession of children.

GUIDELINES FOR SELECTION

The library takes cognizance of the purposes and resources of other libraries in the Cumberland County area and shall not needlessly duplicate functions and materials. The library acknowledges the purposes of educational programs for students of all ages provided by the educational institutions in the area. Text books and curriculum related materials for these programs are provided where the materials also serve the general public or where they provide information not otherwise available. The library is particularly cognizant of the needs of pre-school children who are unserved in a formal way for their collection interests except by the public library. Meeting their needs constitutes an educational preparation before their years in school. The library acknowledges a particular interest in local and state history; therefore, it will take a broad view of works by and about North Carolina. However, the library is not under any obligation to add to its collections everything about North Carolina or produced by author, printers, or publishers with North Carolina connections.

MAINTAINING THE COLLECTIONS

Selection is only one aspect of collection development. Rigorous attention must be given to assessing needs for adding, replacing, and discarding materials in every collection. These responsibilities are a part of all librarians' duties. Copies of titles must be added based on heavy use determined by demand and data on use of the copies available. Withdrawals are required for out-of-date materials, those for which there has been no use in a given period of time, damaged items, and those lost by users. Replacement or substitution of these materials reintroduces the selection process.

GIFTS

The library accepts gifts of materials, but reserves the right to evaluate and dispose of them in accordance with the criteria applied to purchased materials. Gifts which do not accord with the library's objectives and policies will be given to the Friends of the Cumberland County Public Library.

RECONSIDERATION OF LIBRARY MATERIALS

Recognizing that a diversity of materials may result in some requests for reconsideration, the following procedures have been developed to assure that objections or complaints are handled in an attentive and consistent manner. Whenever possible, complaints about library materials should be handled as they arise by the staff person to whom the complaints are made. However, if the complaint is made at a public service desk, when the desk is busy, the complaint will be referred to the supervisor or whoever is on duty in a supervisory capacity. Complaints are referred through the normal chain of command. If the person is still not satisfied after talking to the assistant director, the assistant director will have them fill out a citizen's comment on Library Materials form. On receipt of the written form, the assistant director must write a response within seven days. If the person is not satisfied with the written response from the assistant director, he/she may appeal to the library director with a written request of appeal stating their objections. The library director must offer a written response within fourteen days. If the person is not satisfied with this response, he/she may appeal to the Library Board of Trustees. Upon receiving a written appeal to the library director's response, the Library Board of Trustees must be informed of the complaint at its next regularly scheduled meeting. If the written complaint is submitted to the library Administrative Office at least 15 days prior to the meeting, it will be placed on the agenda for the next regularly scheduled meeting. Otherwise, the matter will be placed on the agenda for the subsequent regularly scheduled meeting. The item will be placed on the Trustees' agenda under new business. A public hearing will be held only if the majority of the Trustees, present and voting, vote in favor of the hearing. If approved, the public hearing will be held at the next regularly scheduled meeting of the Library Board of Trustees. The Library Board of Trustees must make a formal response to the complaint and/or hearing at their next regular scheduled meeting. The Library Board of Trustees is the final board of appeal in reference to public library materials.

MATERIALS AND RESOURCES

Fiction

Classic and contemporary literature, popular best sellers, and genre fiction make up the fiction collection. Its purpose is both to entertain and enrich human understanding by presenting stories in an imaginative way rather than in a factual manner. The emphasis in the collection is on American and English authors. Current best sellers are bought in multiple copies.

Nonfiction

The nonfiction collection emphasizes timely, accurate and useful informational materials to support individual, business, government, and community interests. It also emphasizes materials that are current and high-demand. Materials are available for all ages and reading levels.Materials are selected to represent a continuum of opinions and viewpoints when available. Titles with continued value and those of current, accepted authority are part of the library collection. As a new field emerges, the library attempts to respond with timely additions.While most non-fiction materials are selected for their utility, others are acquired for their capacity to enrich and entertain. Requests from library users are given high priority.

Periodicals

Periodicals are selected to provide materials on current issues and for general reading. The library also selects newspapers of local, state and national interest, depending on the place of publication, the breadth of coverage and the degree of fulfillment of reference or recreational needs.

Children's and Teen Materials

Materials are purchased for children from infancy to age 18. The emphasis of selection is on children's recreational and general information needs.
Easy Books - Easy books may be either educational or recreational in intent, they are distinguished by their illustrations which serve to either supplement, extend, or, in the case of wordless books supplant the text. In most instances, easy books are read aloud to the child or the child studies the pictures and creates his/her own text. Concept books, i.e. books that develop a child's understanding of colors, numbers, etc., fall into the easy book category. Board books for toddlers, stressing colorful simple objects, and Beginning Readers are also included in this collection. Juvenile Fiction - Juvenile fiction collection is designed to meet the needs of the child now ready to make the transition to shorter chapter books or books with a longer text. An effort is made to include all books that have won children's literary awards. Juvenile Nonfiction - The nonfiction collection consists of materials to meet informational, educational, and recreational reading needs of children in preschool through grade six. Because reading levels vary from child to child, a few materials at a higher or lower reading level are included. Teen Fiction - Teen fiction collection is designed to meet the needs of all youth ages 12-18. An effort is made to include all books that have won literary awards.

Microforms

The library purchases microforms when materials are too fragile or bulky to retain in the original form and when they are not readily available in electronic formats.

Visual Materials

The library acquires and makes available visual materials to serve the general informational, educational and recreational needs of the community. The visual materials collection contains a mix of feature films, including current high interest and classics, nonfiction films including self-help, educational, how-to, travel, etc., and children's films.

Sound Recordings

The collection contains audio books and instructional recordings with an emphasis on popular and high interest subjects and titles. The music recording collection consists of a representative mix of music genres, intended to serve both the recreational and educational needs of the community.

Electronic Resources

Materials in electronic formats are selected using the same criteria as their non-electronic counterparts.

Appendix

The Library Board of Trustees for Cumberland County Public Library & Information Center includes as a part of its statement on materials selection the:

  1. Library Bill of Rights
  2. Freedom to Read
  3. Freedom to View

On February 17, 2011 the Board reconfirmed the inclusion of the most recent versions of the above three statement, which follow:

 

Appendix 1: LIBRARY BILL OF RIGHTS

The American Library Association affirms that all libraries are forums for information and ideas, and that the following basic policies should guide their services.

  I.
Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation.
  
  II.
Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.
 
  III.
Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.
 
  IV.
Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas.
 
  V.
A person's right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.
 
  VI.
Libraries which make exhibit spaces and meeting rooms available to the public they serve should make such facilities available on an equitable basis, regardless of the beliefs or affiliations of individuals or groups requesting their use.
 

Adopted June 19, 1939.
Amended October 14, 1944; June 18, 1948; February 2, 1961, June 27, 1967, and January 23, 1980,
Inclusion of “age” reaffirmed January 23, 1996
by the ALA Council.

 

Appendix 2: THE FREEDOM TO READ

The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously under attack. Private groups and public authorities in various parts of the country are working to remove or limit access to reading materials, to censor content in schools, to label “controversial” views, to distribute lists of “objectionable” books or authors, and to purge libraries. These actions apparently rise from a view that our national tradition of free expression is no longer valid; that censorship and suppression are needed to avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals. We, as citizens devoted to reading and as librarians and publishers responsible for disseminating ideas, wish to assert the public interest in the preservation of the freedom to read.

Most attempts at suppression rest on a denial of the fundamental premise of democracy: that the ordinary individual, by exercising critical judgment, will select the good and reject the bad. We trust Americans to recognize propaganda and misinformation, and to make their own decisions about what they read and believe. We do not believe they are prepared to sacrifice their heritage of a free press in order to be “protected” against what others think may be bad for them. We believe they still favor free enterprise in ideas and expression.

These efforts at suppression are related to a larger pattern of pressures being brought against education, the press, art and images, films, broadcast media, and the Internet. The problem is not only one of actual censorship. The shadow of fear cast by these pressures leads, we suspect, to an even larger voluntary curtailment of expression by those who seek to avoid controversy or unwelcome scrutiny by government officials.

Such pressure toward conformity is perhaps natural to a time of accelerated change. And yet suppression is never more dangerous than in such a time of social tension. Freedom has given the United States the elasticity to endure strain. Freedom keeps open the path of novel and creative solutions, and enables change to come by choice. Every silencing of a heresy, every enforcement of an orthodoxy, diminishes the toughness and resilience of our society and leaves it the less able to deal with controversy and difference.

Now as always in our history, reading is among our greatest freedoms. The freedom to read and write is almost the only means for making generally available ideas or manners of expression that can initially command only a small audience. The written word is the natural medium for the new idea and the untried voice from which come the original contributions to social growth. It is essential to the extended discussion that serious thought requires, and to the accumulation of knowledge and ideas into organized collections.

We believe that free communication is essential to the preservation of a free society and a creative culture. We believe that these pressures toward conformity present the danger of limiting the range and variety of inquiry and expression on which our democracy and our culture depend. We believe that every America community must jealously guard the freedom to publish and to circulate, in order to preserve its own freedom to read. We believe that publishers and librarians have a profound responsibility to give validity to that freedom to read by making it possible for the readers to choose freely from a variety of offerings. The freedom to read is guaranteed by the Constitution. Those with faith in free people will stand firm on these constitutional guarantees of essential rights and will exercise the responsibilities that accompany these rights.

We therefore affirm these propositions:

1. It is in the public interest for publishers and librarians to make available the widest diversity of views and expressions, including those that are unorthodox, unpopular, or considered dangerous by the majority.

Creative thought is by definition new, and what is new is different. The bearer of every new thought is a rebel until that idea is refined and tested. Totalitarian systems attempt to maintain themselves in power by the ruthless suppression of any concept that challenges the established orthodoxy. The power of a democratic system to adapt to change is vastly strengthened by the freedom of its citizens to choose widely from among conflicting opinions offered freely to them. To stifle every nonconformist idea at birth would mark the end of the democratic process. Furthermore, only through the constant activity of weighing and selecting can the democratic mind attain the strength demanded by times like these. We need to know not only what we believe but why we believe it.

2. Publishers, librarians, and booksellers do not need to endorse every idea or presentation they make available. It would conflict with the public interest for them to establish their own political, moral, or aesthetic views as a standard for determining what should be published or circulated.

Publishers and librarians serve the educational process by helping to make available knowledge and ideas required for the growth of the mind and the increase of learning. They do not foster education by imposing as mentors the patterns of their own thought. The people should have the freedom to read and consider a broader range of ideas than those that may be held by any single librarian or publisher or government or church. It is wrong that what one can read should be confined to what another thinks proper.

3. It is contrary to the public interest for publishers or librarians to bar access to writings on the basis of the personal history or political affiliations of the author.

No art or literature can flourish if it is to be measured by the political views or private lives of its creators. No society of free people can flourish that draws up lists of writers to whom it will not listen, whatever they may have to say.

4. There is no place in our society for efforts to coerce the taste of others, to confine adults to the reading matter deemed suitable for adolescents, or to inhibit the efforts of writers to achieve artistic expression.

To some, much of modern expression is shocking. But is not much of life itself shocking? We cut off literature at the source if we prevent writers from dealing with the stuff of life. Parents and teachers have a responsibility to prepare the young to meet the diversity of experiences in life to which they will be exposed, as they have a responsibility to help them learn to think critically for themselves. These are affirmative responsibilities, not to be discharged simply by preventing them from reading works for which they are not yet prepared. In these matters values differ, and values cannot be legislated; nor can machinery be devised that will suit the demands of one group without limiting the freedom of others.

5. It is not in the public interest to force a reader to accept with any expression the prejudgment of a label characterizing it or its author as subversive or dangerous.

The ideal of labeling presupposes the existence of individuals or groups with wisdom to determine by authority what is good or bad for others. It presupposes that individuals must be directed in making up their minds about the ideas they examine. But Americans do not need others to do their thinking for them.

6. It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians, as guardians of the people’s freedom to read, to contest encroachments upon that freedom by individuals or groups seeking to impose their own standards or tastes upon the community at large; and by the government whenever it seeks to reduce or deny public access to public information.

It is inevitable in the give and take of the democratic process that the political, the moral, or the aesthetic concepts of an individual or group will occasionally collide with those of another individual or group. In a free society individuals are free to determine for themselves what they wish to read, and each group is free to determine what it will recommend to its freely associated members. But no group has the right to take the law into its own hands, and to impose its own concept of politics or morality upon other members of a democratic society. Freedom is no freedom if it is accorded only to the accepted and the inoffensive. Further, democratic societies are more safe, free, and creative when the free flow of public information is not restricted by governmental prerogative or self-censorship.

7. It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians to give full meaning to the freedom to read by providing books that enrich the quality and diversity of thought and expression. By the exercise of this affirmative responsibility, they can demonstrate that the answer to a “bad” book is a good one; the answer to a “bad” idea is a good one.

The freedom to read is of little consequence when the reader cannot obtain matter fit for that reader’s purpose. What is needed is not only the absence of restraint, but the positive provision of opportunity for the people to read the best that has been thought and said. Books are the major channel by which the intellectual inheritance is handed down, and the principal means of its testing and growth. The defense of the freedom to read requires of all publishers and librarians the utmost of their faculties, and deserves of all citizens the fullest of their support.

We state these propositions neither lightly nor as easy generalizations. We here stake out a lofty claim for the value of the written word. We do so because we believe that it is possessed of enormous variety and usefulness, worthy of cherishing and keeping free. We realize that the application of these propositions may mean the dissemination of ideas and manners of expression that are repugnant to many persons. We do not state these propositions in the comfortable belief that what people read is unimportant. We believe rather that what people read is deeply important; that ideas can be dangerous; but that the suppression of ideas is fatal to a democratic society. Freedom itself is a dangerous way of life, but it is ours.

This statement was originally issued in May of 1953 by the Westchester
Conference of the American Library Association and the American Book
Publishers Council, which in 1970 consolidated with the American Educational
Publishers Institute to become the Association of American Publishers.
Adopted June 25, 1953; revised January 28, 1972, January 16, 1991, July 12,
2000, June 30, 2004, by the ALA Council and the AAP Freedom to Read Committee.
A Joint Statement by:
American Library Association and
Association of American Publishers

 

Appendix 3: FREEDOM TO VIEW

The Freedom to View, along with the freedom to speak, to hear, and to read, is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. In a free society, there is no place for censorship of any medium of expression. Therefore these principles are affirmed:

To provide the broadest possible access to film, video, and other audiovisual materials because they are a means for the communication of ideas. Liberty of circulation is essential to insure the constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression.

To protect the confidentiality of all individuals and institutions using film, video, and other audiovisual materials.

To provide film, video, and other audiovisual materials which represent a diversity of views and expression. selection of a work does not constitute or imply agreement with or approval of the content.

To provide a diversity of viewpoints without the constraint of labeling or prejudging film, video and other audiovisual materials on the basis of the moral, religious, or political beliefs of the producer of film maker or on the basis of controversial content.

To contest vigorously, by all lawful means, every encroachment upon the public's freedom to view.

This statement was originally drafted by the Freedom to View Committee of the American Film and Video Association (formerly the Educational Film Library Association) and was adopted by the AFVA Board of Directors in February 1979. This statement was updated and approved by the AFVA Board of Directors in 1989. Additional copies may be obtained for $1.00 (to cover postage and handling) from: American Film & Video Association, 920 Barnsdale Road, Suite 152, La Grange Park, Illinois 60525, (312)482-4000.
Endorsed by the ALA Council January 10, 1990

Cumberland County Public Library & Information Center Collection Development Policy Statement -- Approved September 21, 1995; Revised 5/18/00, 12/14/00, and 1/20/05