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Thing 2: The Ebb and Flow

I'm going to be finding out about 'Floating Collections' tonight via an online webinar - 'The Ebb and Flow of Floating Collections'. I'm not really sure what floating collections are but I look forward to finding out! Join me by following this link:

https://event.on24.com/wcc/r/1493901/866A8F74A911315DFE5DBBA1AD608028

Comments

  1. Stephen Leitch12 September 2017 at 14:12

    Interesting webinar. Basically with floating collections items don't permanently 'belong' to one library in particular, they become part of the stock of the library they are returned to. The aim seems to be to try and get stock relevant to the needs of the library community in that library, so more books on the shelves that people want to see there and less moving of books between branches. Sounds good in theory but I'm not convinced after listening to this webinar and hearing that half the speakers have dropped floating library collections from their service, often because of falling issues. Also there appear to be problems around too much stock ending up in some libraries, more time spent actually relocating excess stock, people not returning books to where they borrowed them. One speaker highlighted that city library collections tended to lose more of the top titles to the branches as the branches were good at requesting in books. When i think back to my time int he public library service in Moray this is certainly true of my power library users in Lossiemouth who were often the first to request in new and top titles and many a time i would have liked to have kept them for the stock! The library services featured on the webinar who are or have stopped floating library collections are moving more to using collection management software to better guide purchasing, allocation and movement of stock based on statistical usage, something the Moray Library service was using before I left in 2013.
    The webinar has provided me with in sight into a system i knew nothing about and have had no experience of. Being in the school sector now where I have an independent stock from the other secondary schools in the area, I'll probably not need to worry about floating library collections - though it has been interesting learning about them. Useful article from Fairfax library setting out why they initially went for a floating library collection. Really useful as the webinar folk never once explained what a floating library collection was, so had to some further research o find out. http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/library/news/floating.pdf

    This is the report from Nashville Library service who were featured in the webinar, with the reasons for ending Floating Library collections.
    https://www.urbanlibraries.org/rethinking-floating-in-collection-development-innovation-1485.php?page_id=531

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