Successfully communicating about collection ideas and decisions requires establishing community relationships, building internal trust, good storytelling, and an effective overall communication strategy at your library (McClung et al., 2017). This section will cover some of the basics of each topic.

Engaging with and Encouraging Patron Participation in the Collection Development Process

Ensuring that many opportunities exist for patrons to communicate with the library is essential to building a strong relationship between the library and its patron community. A healthy relationship between the two can facilitate both better collection development and increased support from the community when difficult decisions need to be made.

There are multiple strategies that can be employed to engage with a library’s patron community. Some of them can be set up to solicit feedback passively, while others require a more active approach.

Strategies for collecting feedback passively:

• Embed purchase request forms on digital assets (e.g., websites, online subject guides) so that patrons can easily request resources for inclusion in the collection.
• Monitor publisher-provided statistics to determine usage trends.
• Consider whether Patron-Driven Acquisition (PDA), also known as Demand-Driven Acquisition (DDA), makes sense for your library. This approach allows you to purchase materials when it is clear that a patron wants them. This topic is covered more in depth in the section on Ebooks and Print books.

Active strategies for collecting feedback

• Set up or obtain feedback from student, faculty, and friends-of-the-library advisory groups.
• Conduct in-person interviews and focus group sessions.
• Send out surveys.
• Ask outreach and liaison librarians for feedback from their patron communities.

SPARC’s webpage on “Strategies for effectively engaging stakeholders in negotiations” lists resources to help guide licensing negotiations and cancellations, such as roadmaps, library communications, presentations to upper level administration, and more. For major online journal cancellation projects, the University of California’s “Communications planning and execution” section of their publisher negotiation toolkit offers useful guidelines on how to craft an effective communications strategy.

Building Internal Trust

Communicating regularly and transparently with others at your library is essential for soliciting feedback during the decision-making process, for building trust in the decisions that are being made, and for ensuring that collections-related messaging to the library’s patron community remains consistent (McClung et al., 2017). It will help you work more effectively with your colleagues and with library administration.

Some of the frameworks that can be implemented to assist with building internal trust include: creating a cross-departmental collections standing committee, creating collections-related discussion and learning groups for liaison librarians who have collections responsibilities (McClung et al., 2017), or creating a community of practice (Pascual et al., 2019). For librarians whose primary responsibility is collection development, scheduling regular one-on-one collections meetings with liaison librarians and regularly attending liaison meetings can be helpful (McClung et al., 2017).

Storytelling

Being able to effectively and consistently communicate a collection-related decision, situation, or the value of your collection is just as important as doing it regularly and transparently. If your colleagues, library administration, or library patrons are unable to understand what you are trying to communicate, then they may not be able to provide you with the support you need, and trust can be diminished. Your internal stakeholders (e.g., administrators, liaisons) as well as your external ones (e.g., clinicians, students) probably have limited time and being able to communicate your message quickly but effectively is critical.

Consider the following when you’re communicating collections information:

• Are you communicating plainly (i.e., no jargon)?
• Does it make sense to use visuals like infographics or data visualizations to communicate your story? If so, are they easy to understand at a quick glance?
• Can you share case studies or specific examples of the situation to help you illustrate your message?
• When advocating a position to library administration or other management, communicate how your position connects to the university’s mission statement, if it makes sense to do so.

Embedding Collection Development in a Library’s Communication/Marketing Plan

A library’s overall communication or marketing plan should include considerations for how it supports collection development through promotional efforts. It should include guidance on how to promote new or underutilized resources to the community, as well as how to manage discontinued, canceled, or de-accessioned resources.

Collection development personnel should work closely with their library or institution’s designated outreach and marketing support personnel to establish goals and expectations related to resource promotion. For instance, the following could be considered:

• Which print and digital assets are appropriate for promoting library resources?
• How will new resources be promoted in a timely manner?
• Who are the key stakeholders and patron groups for different types of resources?
• How are you reaching underrepresented populations?
• Are the proper institutional brand guidelines being applied when applicable (i.e., which resources allow for co-branding, and are library logos and identity symbols being properly used)?
• Are there library resources that can be promoted alongside library events (e.g., cardiovascular resources during American Heart Month)?
• Are there written communication templates available (for print or digital) that utilize the library or institution’s branding?

If the library does not have an overarching communication or marketing plan in place, a collection development workflow should also include the following considerations:

• Who is responsible for communicating changes to the Library’s collection?
• How are you documenting and sharing internally that new resources are available? (Some sample approaches include reporting on new items through meeting minutes or internal blog posts, emailing relevant subject librarians, etc.).
• Are you utilizing multiple marketing approaches to reach your library’s patrons, including underrepresented populations?
• If a patron requests a resource, is the patron being informed once the resource becomes available in the library’s catalog?
• Are consortial partners being made aware of new resources you’ve purchased which they may now have access to?
• If a resource is removed from the collection, what is the process for communicating that change?

It is also important to try to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing efforts whenever possible and to consider alternative methods if needed (McClung et al., 2017).