Blue Ridge Community College (BRCC), a two-year institution established as a member of the Virginia Community College System, provides post-secondary, state-supported educational facilities for the cities of Staunton, Harrisonburg, and Waynesboro and the counties of Highland, Augusta, and Rockingham. The student body is multi-cultural and covers a wide range of ages, learning styles, and socioeconomic groups. Its two-year college transfer programs in arts and sciences and in certain pre-professional areas lead to associate degrees and offer courses accepted for transfer to four-year institutions. Its occupational and technical programs lead to diplomas, certificates, or associate of applied science degrees. Other programs include developmental work, special training for area industries, continuing education, and community service to groups in the area. Houff Library’s goal is to provide access to collections sufficient in quality, depth, diversity, format and currency to support the research and teaching missions of BRCC.
The purpose of the Collection Development Policy is to establish guidelines for selecting and maintaining materials. In addition to addressing the initial selection of resources, the policy also covers the associated functions of preservation, removal and replacement.
The Head Librarian provides final approval for the acquisition of all materials purchased with library funds. The Head Librarian consults with faculty and staff on selection. Requests from BRCC faculty, staff and administrators, and students are encouraged; they are accepted and processed as appropriate. Houff Library anticipates the educational needs of the central Shenandoah Valley, providing access to information related to the college’s comprehensive programs and services, offering titles to encourage life-long learning and intellectual growth, yet emphasizing general education that is broad based and not bounded by discipline.
Informational needs of the student body are the top collection priority. These needs are filled according to the following guidelines:
Requests from teaching faculty for resources to support instruction are given the highest priority in the allotment of funds (after constant costs such as subscription services and state consortium commitments.
Priority for materials acquisitions follows a five-year cycle (especially medicine, science and technology).
Requests from instructors of new courses for which few or no existing resources are available take precedence among faculty requests. Materials to support existing curricula, research and institutional strengths are considered next, and current interest and recreational materials are considered last.
Houff Library embraces change by providing access to many of its titles in numerous and varied formats, accessible virtually and physically. As new technologies appear, they may not be purchased immediately but formats which make information more accessible to larger numbers of users will be considered and evaluated, weighing relative merit, cost, production standards and convenience of use, comparisons with existing formats to make logical decisions based on usefulness.
The BRCC’s Houff Library subscribes to the American Library Association's Library Bill of Rights and its various interpretations. The concept of censorship is antithetical to the free pursuit of knowledge and exploration of ideas so necessary in the formation of values and beliefs and is a primary goal of education.
The specific criteria used in considering an item for purchase include the following in relative order of importance:
Concerns about Houff Library materials, displays, and web content may be shared with the library staff by submitting a Request for Reconsideration form online.
The selection of periodicals involves using the same considerations as with books but in a different order of importance and there are some distinctive features as well. Periodicals in specific subject disciplines are usually selected at the request of teaching faculty. General interest magazines and newspapers are chosen because they appear on a list of basic sources, or are cited in one or more library databases, and requested by users. Price is also a factor in determining which title(s) may or may not be added.
The existence and increasing ease of use of interlibrary loan has impacted the selection process. In the case of periodicals, a title needed only a few times over the course of several years can be borrowed from another library much more cheaply than it can be purchased. That capability must be weighed against the cost of subscribing to that periodical and balanced by a projected number of uses in order to decide on its selection. Those same variables may be used in considering a book purchase but it is more difficult to gauge projected usage; and one must bear in mind that most libraries will not lend a very new title. Houff Library’s participation in the VIVA consortium, and inclusion in a reciprocal interlibrary loan agreement with most of the libraries in the Commonwealth, guarantees the availability of good cooperative resource sharing through lending. Houff Library does not process interlibrary loan requests for textbooks that are required materials for BRCC courses.
Houff Library welcomes gifted or donated books and manuscripts that elevate or expand its circulating collections in support of Blue Ridge Community College’s teaching and research needs. Items will be evaluated based on the college’s needs and Houff Library’s collection development policy. Donor rights to all materials that are accepted and received by Houff Library are waived once an item or items has been accepted by Blue Ridge Community College’s Houff Library.
In order to make the gift/donation process as efficient as possible interested donors are required to complete a Deed of Gift and/or Donation Form available from Houff Library.
Donors will be responsible for providing an estimated monetary value of gifted/donated items and will be provided a copy of the completed form as a receipt. Houff Library reserves the right to evaluate and make decisions as to the ultimate fate of gifted/donated materials and does not make any assurances to permanently keep and/or catalog gifted/donated items. Gifted/donated items not appropriate for Houff Library to keep will be donated or offered to other libraries or relevant organizations or disposed of based on their condition.
The librarians accept requests for streaming videos that align with course curriculum. Due to budget constraints and vendor licensing, faculty may purchase one streaming video per semester (two videos per academic year) for classroom use. In the case of extenuating circumstances, faculty may contact the Head Librarian.
Collection management must include a program of periodic or ongoing collection review based on space constraints, changing user needs, and deterioration or obsolescence. Following Department of General Services regulations, items removed from the collection are state property and are physically disposed in accordance with state guidelines. Houff Library’s collections do not lend themselves to costly preservation methods or removal to a restricted, environmentally controlled location since the holdings include little that is rare or irreplaceable.
Weeding the collection, or choosing items for reconsideration, may be done piecemeal or in a more systematic manner depending on available time. Some materials are weeded at the time of circulation if their condition is critical. Others are evaluated as part of inventory or periodic review of particular areas of the collection.
When rebinding and mending are not feasible solutions, materials may be discarded. The bibliographic record and circulation records are updated. Physical disposal of materials purchased with state funds is accomplished in accordance with accepted state guidelines.
Collection review for the purpose of deselecting items can be done by librarians. Input from faculty members for the discipline involved is sought and recommendations for replacements are encouraged. Responsibility for de-selection ultimately falls to the librarians.
There are other reasons to consider discarding a title besides poor condition, including:
Curriculum-related media is purchased almost exclusively at the request of faculty. Its removal from the collection also is coordinated with the faculty member for whom it was purchased. As with print formats, there are a number of reasons for performing a collection review and choosing to deselect items in the multimedia collection. The more significant ones, in addition to ones noted for books, include:
When a book is discarded because of its poor physical condition, it may be considered for replacement. Factors to be considered include:
Ongoing and continual review of periodicals is performed annually, and subscriptions may be canceled for some of the same reasons that apply to other materials such as:
Other considerations include