Collection management

A friend of mine suggested that I see how far I can carry a metaphor comparing emptying my mother’s house with maintaining a library collection. I have found several intriguing parallels.

Personnel. The whole process is going smoothly because there is no friction between my brother and me, making a difficult task much easier. I have witnessed feuding siblings attempting to do this job, resulting in further stress and hurt. I imagine that collection development librarians who are able to work together can devise creative solutions while dysfunctions among library workers would preclude such smooth interactions.

Policies. My brother, Dale, and I don’t have written policies, but we did reach consensus on certain larger principles which guide the smaller decisions. Like a collection development policy in a library, our established principles let us make independent decisions confident that our actions will contribute to the good of the whole.

Categories. Libraries divide items into collections based on various categories. We have done that as well. Last week we dealt with a “special collection” of family heirlooms. Neither Dale nor I have children so we wanted them to go to a branch of the family that does. A cousin drove from Indiana to collect them.

Weeding. Our overarching principle is good stewardship. We ask ourselves: “Is this of use to anyone? If so, who?” In some ways, the hardest things to deal with are the ones that are no longer of any use to anyone, things that must go into the trash or recycling. On the other hand, there is a certain satisfaction from sorting the chaff from the wheat, knowing that what is left is a better collection of useful things for having the trash removed. As Greg of Open Stacks noted in the Carnival of the Infosciences #2, weeding can be cathartic.

Selection. Both my brother and I are selecting a few things for our own collections, but we are required to keep that selection to a minimum because we both have small, full houses already. The selection policy is more difficult to express than the weeding policy—a combination of need, desire, and sentiment. More instinctive than logical. More art than science. I imagine that, to a degree, is true in the selection of library materials as well.

Offsite storage. Rick and I may be furnishing a new house in the near future, depending on the outcome of my job search. So, we are keeping some things that we may use in the next house, but don’t have room for in this house. This morning, I arranged for offsite storage, just as a library might.     #

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