Youth Collection Development Exploration

This exploration of collection development systems and resources was completed for LIS 60630: Reference Sources and Services for Youth, and it connects to PLO One: Apply the field’s foundational theories, principles, values, ethics, and skills to everyday practice, and PLO Four: Evaluate systems and technologies relevant to a particular information context. In this assignment, I explored and evaluated several digital collective development resources in the context of a youth collection, as well as collection management systems, for such aspects as their trustworthiness, reliability, ease of use, and bias, and I then described how I would use each in a real-life setting. This project relates to the ALA Core Competencies of Librarianship 2B: “Apply the concepts, issues, and methods of collection management, which entails the lifecycle of materials from evaluation to long-term preservation and other curative practices (including but not limited to acquisitions, selection, purchasing, processing, storage, and de-selection),” 2C: “Include emerging formats and genres of information resources and understand how these may intersect with and reflect the diverse and cultural needs of the information communities through the management of collections,” and 5D: “Recognize the ways that cultural biases impact and influence the collection and description of recorded knowledge and information.” It also connects to the ALCTS Core Competencies for Acquisitions Professionals, which states that an acquisitions professional “Understands current issues and trends in collection development strategies and management.”