This week we discussed the nature of the library's collection and collection management processes for maintaining a ‘floating’ collection across multiple sites. A 'floating' collection requires different collection management strategies, including for example, rotating items amongst libraries to refresh the small collections of picture books, junior fiction, young adult, junior audio visual and magazines held on each site and processing reserved items imported from other sites.

An important strategy for determining to how long to keep books is the 5Rs mental checklist. Assess items to determine whether to:
  • Retain
  • Repair (check binding and pages)
  • Relocate (to another library; check database of libraries from biggest to smallest to fill gaps)
  • Replace (identify subject/topic gaps; assess item condition; determine item currency)
  • Remove (check how many copies are left).

The Brisbane City Council libraries have LOTE collections located at different library sites around Brisbane. FELIX is used to search for LOTE resources. Items from these collections are identified by a language code on the spine (e.g. CH Chinese; IT Italian) and they are kept together as a collection.

This week I also combined circulation desk, roving service and 'back-of-house' duties:
  • processing audio visual returns and maintaining the audio visual section
  • shelving adult fiction and non-fiction;
  • tidying up of junior non-fiction in the children’s area and shelf-checked the area
  • assisting members to locate books.