[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Evergreen Collection Development

[Wilkening, Chris]

Here at Brodart we offer our customers collection development tools. One
of the most significant is a listing compiled by our resident MLS
librarians. Basically what you do is select a genre/type of book
(European travel, Christian historical fiction, et cetera) and it gives
you a listing of books that fit under that category. If I understand it
correctly (I'm still learning about it, too) you can go from a book you
already have in your collection and get books like it. For example, a
patron says that they really like Tom Clancy's books but have read all
of his work, the librarian could select one of his titles and see
similar books that they could then acquire. We're looking at taking it a
step further and if that library has an account with us to allow them to
order it right from there.

These lists are developed by collection development specialists with MSL
degrees and the lists are rather impressive in their scope and size. I'm
fairly certain that there are more titles on any one list than any
library would conceivably be able to afford.

>From what Dan's saying here below, it sounds like you, Art, are working
on a module that is more for the patron/user to request books that
they'd like to see the library purchase -- correct me if I'm wrong. What
I'm looking at is a module that streamlines the librarian's process of
actually sorting and selecting books for purchase using lists our
collection development specialists have build and maintain.

Christopher Wilkening
Web/Application Developer
Brodart Company
570-326-2461 x6496

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Scott [mailto:denials at gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2007 8:07 AM
To: open-ils-dev at list.georgialibraries.org
Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-DEV] Evergreen Collection Development

Art:

I read your Woodchip document yesterday
(http://open-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=scratchpad:acq_serials) and
agree that the Desiderata piece would be very useful. Do you envision
the spending scenarios being visible outside the library? It seems
something like a departmental wish list for materials that would go
beyond the classic "request an item" function (which usually goes into
a black hole as far as feedback goes) with an Amazon-style mix of
wanted items, rankings by those in the department, augmentation of
reviews, artwork, etc from other sources to aid those in rankings
would offer a collaborative model for collection development - and
might be another way to encourage quick donations to the library.

All very fuzzy right now (it is, after all, still just 8:00 am) but
I'm excited by the possibilities.

To get this thread back on track, I'm looking forward to seeing what
Chris has in mind for a collection development interface - both from a
user experience and from an architectural perspective.

On 30/04/07, arhyno at uwindsor.ca <arhyno at uwindsor.ca> wrote:
>
> Hi Chris,
>
> There is a "Desiderata" piece to the work going in acq/ser with OFBiz.
The
> idea is that it will be a sort of rolling catalogue of materials that
are
> either on order and/or represent potential items to be ordered. I used
a
> system like this in a previous life and found it was invaluable for
> automatically calculating different spending scenarios for those, like
me,
> who tended to want far more materials than their budget could sustain.
Can
> you provide some more details on the type of interface you have in
mind?
>
> art


-- 
Dan Scott
Laurentian University