Floating Collections - Building on Your Patrons’ Horizons!

1. Floating Collections - Building on Your Patrons’ Horizons! Dawn Peters Library Director, Orchard Park Public Library Buffalo and Erie County Public Library System Hosted by ALCTS The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services

2. Floating collections: What will be discussed-- • Benefits • Expectations • Cost comparatives (shipping, staff investment in maintenance, shelving space, etc.) • Effects on “Special Collections” • Rebalancing structure • One size does not fit all • Role of Librarians at local units

3. the buffalo and Erie county public library system The Buffalo and Erie County Public Library System consists of: • 37 Units • Central Library • 8 City Branches • 28 Contracting Libraries • 22 Separate Boards of Trustees

4. Things to consider before you begin What exactly is a floating collection? Will a floating collection meet your user needs? Do you want your entire collection to float? Are other libraries within your system as receptive to floating collections? How does it work? Who decides what floats? How is it rebalanced? Need to provide documentation on how to create a floating collection. Is having a floating collection truly a cost saving measure? Do you still charge a fee for requests? Should you float to all locations or a smaller group? Review weeding standards. Develop procedures to establish overflow or loss. Develop procedures for the Floating Determiner process. Work with your ILS vendor to verify and confirm compatibility. How will your location codes and item types affect floating? How do you exclude certain item types or do you exclude.

5. More Things to consider before you begin Must have a redistribution procedure in place before you begin a floating collection. This will prepare you for when a smaller location ends up with too much stock. Consider maintaining the ability to reserve books from other locations, otherwise you will have to answer to the patron who is expecting the same book to be available again at their library e.g. summer reading list title or book club title, etc.

6. And even more Things to consider before you begin It is important to have the weeding standards in place before you begin floating collections. This will hopefully prevent libraries claiming to receive items in worse condition than what they are accustom to on their shelves. This can be challenging but a refresher workshop would help this.

7. There are many advantages to Floating Collections • There is always a “refreshed” collection as it is always changing. • Smaller locations have the potential to have their collections increase in size (if patrons are returning the items there). • The items are immediately available once they are checked back in. • Less need for duplicate titles. • Collections are patron driven, they move where patrons want them.

8. More Advantages… • Less handling of the items by staff. • Reduces the transportation costs as they do not need to go to back to the central location and then moved onto the home location. • Less processing materials needed (no need for library specific labels). • Provides an opportunity for libraries to see if there is a need for a particular collection at their location by way of what is being returned.

9. Start with… Start with certain collections such as Large Print, Audio books, Picture Books, Romance paperbacks, biographies, Readers.

10. Screen shots on how to set up items to float Screen shots of how to set up items to FLOAT within your ILS is most helpful. If staff have a better handle on what is involved in the process it helps to better understand how floating collections work.

11. In the beginning… • Implement the weeding process if it hasn’t already taken place for the collections slated to float. • As mentioned before, start with certain collections such as Large Print, Audio books, Picture Books, Romance paperbacks, biographies and Readers. • You may decide not to float “special collections” collections that are patron driven/demanded/expected at certain locations such as local history collections, magazines, Home Improvement or other high demand collections. However, floating a special collection may be good for another location that wants to see if that subject would work at their location.

12. Important points to remember • Involve all staff in the process. • Have facts to back up this process to help staff understand the significance and benefits of a floating collection. • Stress that feedback is always welcomed. • WEED before you begin. • Let staff know that reassessments and evaluations will occur. • Have the strong believers help the process along.

13. Rebalancing • To establish the rebalancing “algorithm”, we first looked at the total number of audiobook copies that were added to each library’s collection in 2010 (regardless of when they were ordered).  Libraries were assigned a ranking from 1-6, with “6” awarded to the one library that added the most copies, and a “1” to the libraries that added the least number of copies.  • We also considered where these copies were checked out in 2010, again assigning a “6” to the libraries with the highest audiobook circulation, and a “1” to the libraries with the lowest audiobook circulation.  • Perhaps unscientifically, the two numbers (2010 audiobook purchase activity + 2010 audiobook borrowing activity) were added, resulting in scores that ranged from 2-12.  For the most part, the number of purchases correlated to the number of checkouts, but there were a handful of situations that revealed low purchases/high circulation and vice-versa.  It wasn’t a real surprise to see which libraries were at the high and low ends, but we wanted to be certain. • Somewhat arbitrarily, but also based on the results we saw, in addition to the size of the physical space we had to work with, we came up with “60” as the total number of possible distributions.  Each of the 37 libraries is assigned 1, 2, or 3 evenly spaced slots among the 60.  The seven top-ranked libraries each receive 3 copies of different titles in this scenario, the next nine receive 2, and the remainder receive 1. 

14. Rebalancing continued • We printed many streamers with each library’s 3-letter code prominently displayed and placed them in the 60 slots.  A marker is used to know which library we last used.  When we started, libraries were still purchasing their own copies singly, via the Checklist, or were receiving RushList copies.  We took care of holds first, of course.  The marker tells us where on the tracking slip list to start distributing the copies.  This is the best way we could come up with, and there are probably better ways, to avoid sending copies to the same libraries.  It gives all libraries an equal chance, but some libraries will get more because they occupy more of the 60 slots.

15. Key reasons for floating collections • Libraries will have constantly refreshed collections. • Materials are available for immediate check out as they do not have to go through redelivery – less “in transit” time. • Will help to identify actual supply and demand by what is returned to the locations. Notice how the all the reasons benefit the patrons.

16. Advance Planning Decisions • Float all or part of a collection – it depends on the situation. If you are just opening a brand new library you may want to float the entire collection. If you are a large system with multiple units, I would recommend floating a part of the collection to ease into any transition and determine if it is a right fit. • Material type – decide on what material type to start with • Location – decide whether you want to start at one location or more than one or all locations.

17. Advance planning continued… • Test on a small scale first – possibly start with the large print collection as in our case, many libraries have smaller large print collections. • Plan for statistics changes – be prepared for the change in statistics because there will be a change. Monitor the change in statistics to determine the success.

18. Floating Collection Concerns • What part of the collection should float first? • Do we have enough shelf space? • How will we maintain our knowledge of the collection? • What does that mean in terms of the workload? • How will the patrons respond?

19. Floating Collection Concerns continued • How do you build a floating collection? • Collection Development - can we add non floating items with floating items in the same collection? • Should our weeding policy be the same for floating collections? • Paradigm shift for staff.

20. Advantages • Patron-centered. • Increases materials availability. • Provides continuously refreshed collections.

21. Some Variables in assessing success • Statistics on total number of items that floated in 12 months. • Statistics on total number of items that floated to a new location per month.

22. Floating collections and collaborative collection development Depending on where, when and how you start a floating collection, there is the element of collaborative collection development. Following are points to keep in mind when it comes to collaborative collection development and the impact it has on floating collections.

23. Benefits of Collaborative collection development • Extended scope of resources • Floating collections • Collection Development Experts • Cost Savings • One Stop Shop

24. Continued benefits • Checklists of adult and juvenile materials for the system to select from and to add to their Library’s local collections. • Materials ordered based on popularity and trends purchased for local libraries for their collection. • Online tools we use to place our orders. • Great customer service.

25. Barriers of collaborative collections • Inexperience • Budgetary constraints

26. gaining support for collaborative collections Open dialogue is key to any successful collaborative project. Getting input from all involved including the patrons is a win win situation.

27. Things to think about • Have dialogue with your library patrons. • ILS system reports to identify weak areas and popular areas.

28. Examples of Cooperative Collection Development • Rushlist – weekly – purchased centrally for local libraries • Checklist – monthly – selection lists for local libraries to purchase from • Special checklists – as needed - selection lists for local libraries to purchase from as needed • WNYLRC Resource Sharing Committee Purchase-on-Demand Pilot Program

29. Resources Floating Collections – Is it time for your library to convert? Nov. 9, 2007 CAL Conference Presentation Presenters: Ann Cress, Kathy Halloran, Kathy Munch Jefferson County Public Library http://www.geauga.lib.oh.us/Passpages/pdfs/Floating%20collections%20recommendation%204%2010%2007.pdf

30. Thank you! Thank you to Maureen McLaughlin and Mary Jean Jakubowski from the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library for their contributions and support! and The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services

31. Thank you! Dawn K. Peters Library Director Orchard Park Public Library