INFO 266-10
Collection Management
Fall 2016 Syllabus
Joni Richards Bodart
E-mail
Phone: (408)924-2728
Syllabus Links Textbooks CLOs Competencies Prerequisites |
Resources Canvas iSchool eBookstore |
Canvas Information: Courses will be available beginning August 24th, 6 am PDT unless you are taking an intensive or a one unit or two unit class that starts on a different day. In that case the class will open on the first day that the class meets.
You will be enrolled into the Canvas site automatically.
Course Description
Study of collection management in all types of libraries and information centers. Includes analysis of information needs, criteria for selection, collection use evaluation, and resources for collection development.
Course Requirements
Office Hours
I will be in my office by appointment, Clark Hall, 418H, and will be on campus some weekdays, however, without an appointment, there’s no guarantee I will actually be IN my office.
I will answer e-mail on a daily basis or as quickly as I can. I will also be posting email responses to the FAQs section of the discussion board when questions are asked that are of interest to the whole class.
Please feel free to use BBIM to contact me. I will respond immediately if I am at the computer, and as quickly as possible if I am not. If I am writing or in the middle of something, my response may be quite brief. Such brevity is not intended to be construed as rudeness or lack of willingness to help you. Complex questions may be more efficiently handled via the FAQs or email.
If you need to speak to me by phone, I will do all I can to be available to you, but scheduling that call in advance to make it convenient for both of us, and ensure that I have enough time cleared to respond to your questions or problems.
DISCLAIMER
I make every effort to proofread the Syllabus and the Canvas website, but errors can occur. Please contact me with any errors you see or any questions or may have so I can correct or explain them.
Instructional Philosophy
I want each of you in this course to succeed, and I will do everything I can to help you do so, but this is a partnership. Please make sure that communication is your top priority during the semester. Ask questions when you have them, seek clarifications when you need them, and take responsibility for understanding all expectations, content and assignments for the course. You are responsible for your own learning experience. I do not make you succeed. YOU make you succeed. You also make you fail. Understanding the contents and expectations explained in the Syllabus is critical for a student’s success in the class.
The Canvas Site
Please check the site regularly for announcements, discussion board questions, and so on. As soon as you are enrolled, go to the site, read my welcome message, then go to the discussion board and introduce yourself, both professionally and personally. I will give you a format for each part of your introduction. If you read someone’s introduction and think that you would like to work with them on a team, you are welcome to contact them either on that forum or privately and form your team immediately. The purpose of these introductions is to allow you to see who else is in class and if anyone wants to write about the same kind of library or library/team of customers that you would like to work on, making the process of creating teams easier and shorter.
Explore the various forums for other information I think might be helpful to you, such as resources and links to sites you will find useful, and survival tips from previous classes. And make sure you take a look at the policy manuals given as examples. I have posted advice/survival tips from previous classes under Course Information. Please take a look at it, as I think it will be helpful. I will ask you to add to these tips at the end of the semester, and your comments will be very valuable to me and to future students as I continue to develop this course. Tips about your experience with the asynchronous format will be very important to future students.
CLASS PARTICIPATION
Read text and participate in class discussions on discussion boards. While I may comment from time to time, these conversations are student-driven. However, I will be keeping track of them to record your participation. Participate is defined as participating and contributing your ideas and opinions on your small group discussion forums, and posting at least once on the main biweekly topic forums.
The class will be sorted into random small discussion groups. Students MUST participate in the small group discussions as described above. Each group will post a summary of the of the most important/valuable article or chapter to the main discussion board every other week, and students in the other groups will comment at least once on these posts in addition to their small group posts. I will be reading the small group forums, but most likely will not be commenting regularly on them.
To summarize—one week you will discuss the topic of the week in small groups, and decide which resources were most valuable. The next week one person from each small group will summarize comments on most valuable resource and rationales for that choice. (The group leader has been randomly selected for the first posting to the entire class. After that, each group will decide on a schedule for the rest of the semester.)
Comments should be thoughtful and insightful, adding to our mutual learning process, and should NOT recapitulate what others have said. Questions will be posted on a biweekly basis, so you will have two weeks to respond. There is a list of discussion topics and due dates under Course Information. And while you do need to keep on top of the discussion boards, it is fine if you have a lot to say about one topic, and post more than the required number, and then have less to say on the next one, and do fewer. I will be looking at the average numbers over the semester. But if you regularly don’t post or post too few, I will notice. Please note that Canvas allows me to access statistics for students, and I’ll be able to count easily the number of your original posts and responses to others’ posts. When responding to discussion questions, please do lease do include the name of the person whose post you are responding to.
PLEASE NOTE THAT THE FAQS FORUM IS AN EXCEPTION TO THIS, AND I WILL BE KEEPING TRACK OF IT. IF YOU WANT A RESPONSE AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE, PLEASE EMAIL ME DIRECTLY, OR IM ME, AND I WILL GET TO IT AS PROMPTLY AS I CAN. Students are also welcome to respond to FAQs when they know the answers. If a student’s answer to the question is correct, I will not comment further.
COLLABORATE SESSIONS
Lecture information will be given via Collaborate classes. Synchronous attendance is optional, but highly recommended, especially if you are unfamiliar with the topics under discussion or have questions about them. I will be doing a mini-lecture, 30-45 minutes, on each of the chapters of your policy manual, to let you know what I think the most important concepts are. These lectures include information not in your texts. I will also answer questions about assignments and other things you are confused about. All Collaborate sessions will be recorded for asynchronous viewing. I will have a student assistant who will be able to help you with technical issues. Be sure to log into the class session at least 10 minutes ahead of time, so you can get any communication problems taken care of ahead of time, before class starts.
There will be five Collaborate class sessions. All are required, and all are asynchronous. They will all be recorded, and the links to them and the PowerPoints that go with each of them will be posted on the website. Dates and content for these sessions are below. While some professors record their lectures and use them over and over, I do not. I record the live sessions each semester, and do not reuse them.
PLEASE NOTE: Students who have taken this class previously recommend that you attend all Collaborate sessions live, if at all possible. You will be able to ask questions if something isn't covered or if something isn't clear. (You will find information on their other recommendations on the Canvas site for this class.) I am sure you have questions about all of the above, and you can bring them with you to the first session, email me, or post a question on the FAQs forum.
You need to use a microphone and speaker for these sessions if at all possible. I suggest purchasing a headset with a mike attached, since that will give the best sound quality and also leave your hands free for typing and mousing. If you are in a public area with background noise, you will NOT be able to hear/speak and be understood without a headset. In addition, your poor sound quality will become part of the tape, and make life difficult for everyone who listens to the recording.
You will need to get to all of the Esessions AT LEAST 10 minutes ahead of time, so my assistant can check to see that you can speak and hear. When this has been confirmed, s/he will tell you how to indicate that you’ve stepped away from your computer, and you don’t have to come back till 630. BTW, I have to do this too, to make sure my hardware is working properly as well.
Take a look at the Collaborate tutorials at http://ischool.sjsu.edu/current-students/technology-support/blackboard-collaborate/blackboard-collaborate-web-conferencing. Log in to Collaborate with your first and last name, NOT a screen name. Your login name is what I see in the list of people in the session. You should log in as Susie Smith, not Smith, Susie. If you have a nickname you wish to use, please use that to log in. If Ms. Smith wants to be Susan instead of Susie, she should log in as Susan. If this is the first time you will be using Collaborate, you may be prompted to download some software which may take anywhere from 2 to 20 minutes depending upon your Internet connection speed. You can pre-configure your system with the required software by going to the support page located at:http://ischool.sjsu.edu/current-students/technology-support/blackboard-collaborate/blackboard-collaborate-web-conferencing-3.
Topics for E sessions will be:
- 8/31—Q&A—this will NOT be a lecture, just Q&A and information. I will go over the syllabus in detail. If you have questions, especially about teams, it might be a good idea to stop by. This session will be from 630-730 only, unless there are additional questions or discussions.
The following sessions will be from 630-900 pm PT. Sessions may end earlier if there are few or no questions/comments.
- 9/7—Defining CM, Community assessment, Publishing Industry, Selection process
- 9/28—Acquisitions, Budgets, Fundraising, Weeding
- 10/5—Evaluation, Preservation, Resource Sharing, Serials, Marketing & Merchandising
- 11/9—Censorship, Intellectual Freedom, Reconsideration, Wrap-up
This scheduling and the due dates for assignments should inform your reading of the text, articles on Canvas site, and outside readings. There is also a class organization document on the website with information on what you should be doing week by week.
POLICY MANUAL TEAM WORK
You must work as a team member with the others in your team, using email, your discussion board, Google Docs, Google Hangouts, or other software. You are welcome to meet f2f if that is possible, but it is not required. You are REQUIRED to be a member of a team for this class. Teams will be made up of 4-5 members, but additional members may be added to ensure that everyone in the class is on a team studying the type of library or information organization that they prefer.
Teams will be formed during the first two weeks of the semester, using a discussion forum and a Google doc to which each team will contribute. Classes vary from one semester to another in both size and personality, so please be aware that it may or may not go completely smoothly. Your patience is greatly appreciated. These are the steps I would like you to follow.
- Go to Introductions/Team Building forum, and introduce yourself as required, and give some details about the kind of library you would like to write about and how you function as a team member, including strengths and weaknesses.
- Read the introductions, and contact anyone you would like to work with or anyone who is interested in writing about the same kind of library you are interested in working on. You may do this either privately or on the discussion forum. It will be easier if you are all proactive about this, rather than sitting back and waiting to see what happens.
- Once you have agreed to work with one or two other people, post the information about your team on the Google doc set up for that purpose. There is a link to the doc on the website under Modules. Once you have posted that information, you will officially be a team, and so noted in my records. You will need to include in your post to the Google doc: team number, type of library, team members’ first and last names, and the name of the team member who will be submitting the different parts of your policy manual. This information does not have to be submitted all at one time. You can continue to add members until you have either 4 or 5. You need to add your team number, team members, and type of library as soon as your team forms, to make your team official, and then you can go back over the next few days and add the additional information as your team makes decisions about their process and content.
Some of you have probably done team projects before, and have not enjoyed them. I highly recommend that you take a look at Dr. Haycock's presentation on working in virtual teams. (There is a link to it under the Course Documents section of the Content area.) This will give you lots of hints on how to create a successful virtual team. You will also find suggestions from previous classes under Course Information. Finally, I am happy to report that negative team experiences in this class are definitely in the minority. If you do your prep, follow the student suggestions, take a look at the video, and stay in close touch with your teammates, it is very unlikely that you will be part of that minority.
IF YOU HAVE TO DROP THE CLASS AT SOME POINT DURING THE SEMESTER, PLEASE LET ME AND YOUR TEAM MEMBERS KNOW RIGHT AWAY. If you decide to “opt out” without formally dropping the class, please let your team members know. It is very disconcerting to email and text someone who is still in the class but doesn’t respond. If you have a nonresponsive team member, please let me know at once. I will email the nonresponsive team member, and check on what is going on. If I get no response, I will instruct the rest of the team to continue on without them, noting which chapters they contributed to, and when they stopped participating. Grades will be based on how much work was and was not done. If you do not contribute to an assignment, your grade will be zero (not F) for that assignment.
At the end of the semester, after you have turned in your revised policy manual, you will be required to evaluate your team members on their participation and the quality of work that they contributed to the project. You will also evaluate your own performance, so that every team member has an individual evaluation. These evaluations will be incorporated into the participation grade. You will submit this document via the assignments dropbox. THIS IS AN INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT, NOT A TEAM ASSIGNMENT. ALL CONTENT WILL BE KEPT CONFIDENTIAL.
It is up to the members of each team to work out interpersonal problems. I am available for advice and consultation, but it is ultimately up to the team members to figure out how to work together successfully and ensure that everyone contributes equally. You will spend a good part of your professional life as part of one team or another, and knowing how to be a good team player, both in contributing and convincing others to contribute, is essential. This semester will give you a chance to practice that.
ASSIGNMENTS
1. READING LOG AND SYNTHESIS (CLOs 1-7)
There are many print and online sources on collection development outside the textbooks. You will need to explore those items in order to get information that will help you put together your policy manual, examine current/evolving collection development theory, and explore the role of the librarian or information specialist in collection development today. This log is intended to be a record of the research that you did during the semester, as you work on your policy manuals. My intention is to help you keep track of your research and your learning, and not to create busy work for you.
IN ADDITION TO THE REQUIRED TEXTBOOKS, your research should include the equivalent of at least 250 pages of professional reading, most of which will support the process of creating your policy manual. This assignment is not busy work, but a formal record of the research that you did as part of your policy manual assignment. You must include at least 250 pages, but you may include more than that if you did additional research.
There is a bibliography of articles and sites students from previous classes have found useful to get you started, although you don’t have to use it if you don’t want to. However, it’s just a beginning point—I do expect you to research other sources as well. A log that contains citations only from the bibliography will not be eligible for an A, so you will need to indicate the new articles in some way to show me that you did indeed add new resources. This bibliography has been reformatted to make it more accessible for you, however, not all citations conform to APA requirements, so please be sure to check your formatting on your citations to make sure it does.
You will be creating this log as you do research for your policy manual, and therefore may choose to research/read in the order of the chapters in the manual. This is not required. Therefore, in either half of your log, you could have articles on all 11 of the chapters, or articles only from the topics covered in the first or last half of the semester. How you create and organize your reading/research is up to you. In other words, a chapter by chapter organization is fine. Organizing by ABC author/title is also fine. But a unorganized collection of materials is NOT fine, nor is one in the order in which you read the articles. If you read an article, and find it unimportant or of little value, please omit it from your log.
Recently a student created a reading log by looking for the longest academic articles available, because fewer would be needed to make up the database. This is not necessarily the smartest or most fun way to create your log, because non-scholarly or brief articles can also give you lots of valuable information, and may be more interesting and fun to read as well. I know reading academic articles is not always (or ever) fun, so limiting yourself to them will not make this assignment easier or more interesting.
For each item in your n log, please include:
- the bibliographic citation including the number of pages in the chapter/article
- a code (explained on the first page of each half of the assignment) indicating whether or not it is an item you found on your own or one that was listed on the bibliography of print and web resources posted on the website
- a summary of its content
- an evaluation, including what you did or didn’t find useful about it.
The information on each item should be about one page single spaced, two pages double spaced, and be roughly divided in half between summary and evaluative information. The number of pages needed for this assignment depends on the length of your entries and the number of them you submit. This assignment is designed to be worked on for the entire semester, as you do research for your policy manual. Please do NOT use Excel for this assignment.
You may want to create a blog for this assignment. I have been told that students prefer to do this instead of using Word, and if you would like to format your assignment this way, please send me the link and password to your blog early in the semester so I can confirm that I can access it. If you would like to add this assignment to a blog you have already set up, that’s fine. Just add it to a separate section of your blog, so I can find it easily.
Do not wait till the end of the semester to start this assignment!
Do not wait until it’s convenient to write the entry on each article or chapter!
Do write each entry as soon as you finish examining it! It’s too easy to forget!
If you are doing a blog for this assignment, do send me a link to your homepage as soon as you have it set up, to confirm that I can access it. If your blog is password protected, you must also send the password.
You will be turning in this assignment in two sections, each containing approximately one half of the required pages. (This means no less than 125 pages each.) Reading extra pages will be likely to enhance your grade. Please note that some of the examples include the entire log, rather than half of it. This is because I used to have students turn in the whole thing at the end of the semester. I believe it is easier for everyone if logs are submitted in two sections, rather than all at once.
While I am not going to add up the number of pages listed for each and every log, please be aware that if I think you have not read the required number of pages, I will go back and count them. When you count the number of pages in a book, include only the pages in the chapters (limit three per book) you read, not front matter, bibliographies or indexes. You may have used these sections, but I doubt you will have actually read them for content. Types of material in your log will include, but not be limited to:
- chapters in books about collection development in the specific type of library you are using for your policy manual. Limit three chapters from any one book, and count only the pages for each chapter.
- professional articles about collection development from current journals in the field.
- web sites that are particularly useful in the collection development process. (Estimate time spent as pages read. For example, how long does it generally take you read a one page article? A five page article? A ten page article? If you can read a five page article in 15 minutes, and spend 30 minutes recording it in your log, then a five page article equals 45 minutes. If you spend 45 minutes looking at a website and recording the entry for it in your log, it counts as 5 pages.)
- videos or recorded lectures and other content
2. REFLECTION PAPER (CLOs 1-9)
This paper will discuss what you have learned this semester, and how your learning has changed your perceptions, thoughts, ideas, and actions. You will also discuss how you think you will be using what you have learned in the future, and why or why not you consider your learning to be significant or important. What did you know about CM when the semester began? What do you know now? What philosophical changes have you made to your view of librarianship, and the information profession? What has the most valuable part of this course been? What was the least valuable? What did you learn about yourself? What did you learn about working in a team? Has this class changed your thinking about your profession? If so, how? If not, why not? How does this class fit into the rest of the classes in your program? This is a then-and-now reflection or comparison of how far you have come and how much you have changed this semester, and what those changes have taught you. This paper may be informal in style, i.e., in first person, and does not need to use APA citation format. Minimum 2-3 pages, maximum, 15 pages.
3. COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT POLICY MANUAL (CLOs 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
Working in teams, based on the type of library you are interested in, develop a comprehensive collection management policy manual. Chapters for the policy manual are described below. MORE DETAILED INFORMATION ON EACH CHAPTER IS ON THE CLASS WEBSITE.
When deciding on whom to work with on a team, you will need to examine the introductions on the discussion forum, especially what kind of library people want to work on, and what they describe as the roles they play in a team. When your team has formed, it is important to allocate the roles of leader or leaders. For instance, rather than one leader, you might have two leaders: a leader for deadlines and a leader for content. You might want one person to be responsible for final checking and submission. You might want to have different leaders for each chapter. Watching Ken Haycock’s video will help you decide what roles are most important to your team. It is likely that teams will be able to bond faster and better if you include some face time—meeting on Skype or Google Hangouts, etc., or even just activating the video when using Collaborate. While we are a distance school, seeing people’s faces and expressions can be really helpful in getting to know them and working with them. Including a picture of yourself on the Canvas class site is also another way to help others see you as a person, not just a name.
Please note that the Canvas site includes everyone taking this class from me this semester in both regular and special sessions, and therefore, you may need to accommodate to differing time zones within your team.
All libraries will be fictional. This allows you to be as creative as possible when creating them. Other classes have included: a candy archive and museum, a post zombie apocalypse “frontier/survival” library that loaned things as well as information, a YA library providing savvy teens with information forbidden by the anarchist government, where librarians did collection development by scavenging, music library set in alternate universe, traveling libraries in giant airships that moved from one part of the world to another as needed, steampunk societies and cultures, libraries that might have existed in the past, but didn’t, or libraries that were started by famous fictional characters, such as Sherlock Holmes, Will Wonka, or Bilbo Baggins. PLEASE NOTE: if you plan to do a library based on a fictional character(s), make sure you have enough background information to describe the world within which it exists. I have seen a library created for the Marvel universe, for example, because one group member was a Marvel comics superfan, and there’s a ton of information on the backstories of each character. You are welcome to have fun when you create your library, but make sure it fits the topic of each chapter. The Holmesian library had to be reconfigured when the team realized that they had to figure out how to include electronic resources. So it became a library started by Sherlock to support his own research, and inherited by his and Dr. Watson’s descendants—or something similar. Fictional library examples are on the course website.
Appropriate forms and documents will be included in an appendix for each section or chapter of your policy manual. These can be forms developed by the team or developed from ones used by actual libraries. (Appropriately cited, of course!) This assignment will be done using a library that the team creates, rather than an actual brick and mortar library. Please note that this is a change from previous semesters, and policy manual examples may include those based on real libraries, even though that option is now not available to you. Including humor when creating the names of your library, its town/location, and its donors, grants, endowed collections, and so on, is encouraged but not required. Please note that some policy manual examples include humor, others do not.
Precise information about the library, its policies, staff, and collections will be required. Be aware that including tables, graphs and charts (IN APPENDICES TO EACH CHAPTER) will help you convey information more concisely and in formats that can be more easily understood than straight text. Each section will contain a bibliography citing the various sources, print and online, that you used while writing that section.
When the completed manual is turned in as a whole at the end of the semester, these chapter bibliographies will be collected at the end of the manual, rather than at the end of each chapter. (I.e., a bibliography section, with items from Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and so on. In other words, you don’t have to realphabetize the whole list.) Graphs, tables, charts and other illustrative documents will stay with the chapter they were designed for, rather than being collected at the end of the manual. Illustrative documents stay with the chapter. References are collected by chapter at the end of the document.
You must create your own policy manual from scratch. Using an existing policy manual with minor changes IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. Your manuals must be your own work, even when you include forms, surveys or other supportive documents from existing libraries. If I think you are using chunks of material from an existing manual, rather than writing your own policies, I will want to discuss it with your team. You will be required to demonstrate that you have not plagiarized any materials. (See statement on academic integrity at the end of this syllabus.)
The completed manual must be detailed enough that an real library could use it to define, create, and implement collection development and management policies. It will be a demonstration of the depth of your knowledge of the subject, and may be added to your eportfolio documenting your accomplishments as a library school student. In fact, a number of students who have been working for libraries that don’t have a collection development policy, have revised and implemented all or part of it as the actual policy for that library after the semester is over.
Please note that this manual will differ in some aspects from the actual policy manuals you will find in libraries and online. Many policies do not contain the detail that I am requiring. All chapters must be complete and detailed, even if it is unlikely that an actual policy for your type of library would have them. This is an exercise, not reality. Therefore, even though a real special library might not have a reconsideration policy, saying “We don’t have an intellectual freedom problem in this library” will not suffice.
There is no way to predict the number of pages required for this assignment, so please see the examples for manuals on your type of organization to get an estimate. For example, a public or school library will be likely to have lengthier sections of merchandising and reconsideration than an archival collection. Weeding policies for an archival collection will be very different from a children’s library. Most completed manuals will be about 75-125 pages, which is why I don’t ask you to do them individually.
You will turn in each chapter, based on the due dates given below. Please include your team name and the last names of your team members in the title of the document. For instance, Chapter 7, Team 1, Smith, Jones, Alexander. I must be able to identify your team using only the title of your submission. Please include a cover sheet for each chapter, giving the chapter title, the name and type of the library, the team name, and names of team members. Points will be deducted if you do not conform to document title requirements or do not have a cover sheet for each section you turn in, so you will want appoint one team member to do the final check for these things, and also submit each chapter. This person will need to be meticulous and detail-oriented. You need to do only one cover sheet for Chapters 1-4, since they are submitted together. Each chapter should always begin on a new page, as a chapter in a book does.
PLEASE NOTE: Not adhering to this format means that 3-5 points will be deducted from your grade.
TEAM ASSIGNMENTS WILL BE SUBMITTED ONLY ONCE, BY THE SAME PERSON ON EACH TEAM. If there is a problem, and someone else needs to submit that chapter, please let me know. All team members should be able to see their grades and my feedback. If you cannot, please let me know, and I will correct it. All team members should get the same grade on all team assignments. If one member has a different grade, it is an error, so please let me know so I can correct it. If you receive a grade that does not seem to make sense, (such as 5 or 7 or 0) please ask me about it.
Your chapters will be evaluated, commented on, and returned to you. My goal for this is seven days. In other words, if you turn in something on Sunday at 1145pm, I should, under normal circumstances, post the grades for that chapter by the following Sunday.
At the end of the semester, you will be able to turn in a corrected final version of your entire project. This does not mean that every section will need to be rewritten, since only those that receive less than satisfactory grades (in the team’s opinion) will need rewriting. Other sections can be turned in without further changes, assuming their formatting is the same as the corrected chapters. The submitter will note which chapters have been changed when turning in the revised manual. Even if no changes are made, each team must submit a completed policy manual with a note attached stating that no changes were made. While revision is not required, it will allow you to raise the grade received for the project. (See grading standards below.) All members of a team will receive the same grade for the policy manual chapters, and for the revised manual, but due to differing participation and reading log grades, may not receive the same grade for the course.
Each section of your policy manual will be submitted in document format. When you are ready to submit a chapter, follow the procedures on the Canvas site.
PLEASE NOTE: You may submit more than one document to fulfill an assignment, but all documents must be submitted at the same time. If you want to submit an assignment that you have done in two files, you MUST submit them at the same time. If you have submitted the wrong document, and let me know, I will allow you to submit the correct document, if you make it obvious which I am to grade.
Be sure to keep copies of all your work on CDs, flash drives, and/or on all team members’ computers, so if one of you has a problem or a crash, you won’t lose your work. Another reason for keeping your work is that you will be able to use it when you do your Eportfolio. This includes your completed policy manual, your reading log and synthesis, and your reflection paper. You will need to discuss in your competency statement what part of your policy manual represents your own work, just as you would for any other team project.
I recommend sending each chapter back and forth from at least one team member to another in the exact version you will be turning in, just to see if you have any problems attaching or opening it or if there are formatting changes. I will let you know if I have any problems about this. Glitches exist, and I understand this.
4. TEAM PRESENTATIONS (CLOs 3, 4, 6, 7)
Teams will present their libraries and policy manuals and record those presentations, posting links to them on the appropriate forum. I expect each team member to participate in the presentation, and discuss part of either the library or the team process. PowerPoint slideshows or some other form of visual presentation will illustrate and organize your presentations. YOU WILL LOSE POINTS IF YOU READ YOUR PPT SLIDES! Your complete presentation will be no longer than 20 minutes, which means that you will have to include a lot of information in a short time, so writing down and practicing what you will say and how you will use the visual part of your presentation will be important.
I will watch all presentations, but you will be required to watch and grade/evaluate several of them, and turn in your evaluations to me. In general, even numbered groups will evaluate odd numbered ones, and vice versa. Exceptions will be decided at the end of the semester. There will be several evaluators for each group. This assignment is completed when you have been part of a team presentation and ALSO INDIVIDUALLY EVALUATEDseveral of the teams and submitted those documents. NO ONE WILL BE REQUIRED TO EVALUATE ALL THE TEAMS. EVERYONE WILL BE EXPECTED TO EVALUATE THEIR OWN TEAM, INCLUDING THEMSELVES. Usually, this will mean that even numbered teams evaluate odd numbered teams, and vice versa. If teams would like to watch the presentations they need to evaluate as a group and submit one team evaluation, rather than several individual evaluations, that is fine. Just make sure that the opinion of each person on the evaluating team is included.
My Collaborate student assistant can help you learn how to load your slides or other visuals, and practice on Collaborate before you present, so your presentation will be smoother and more effective. You will set up these practice sessions during the semester with the assistant. For instance, since you will be changing speakers during the presentation, it will be necessary to figure out ahead of time who will say what and in what order and how the “hand-off” to another team member will be managed. Practicing with the assistant will also mean that he/she can give you tips about these things that you may not have been aware of. After you have recorded your presentation, you will post a link to your presentation so other students can view it and make comments on it.
WHEN SUBMITTING THIS ASSIGNMENT YOU MUST SUBMIT THE LINK TO YOUR PRESENTATION, THE SCRIPT OF YOUR PRESENTATION AND A COPY OF YOUR POWERPOINT OR OTHER VISUALS.
These are some of the topics I'd like you to include:
- How you decided on what library to use, and how close to reality it would be
- Brief description of your library and why you think it’s important
- Unique or interesting features of your library
- How you went about setting up your team process
- Division of labor—who wanted to do what and why
- Communication—how often, and about what
- Problem resolution
- What you’ve learned about team work during the semester
- Most valuable part of the process, what you learned most from
- What you’d recommend to future students to help them succeed in their team work
Please note that since all of your policy manuals will be essentially alike, you need to focus on the parts of your library and policy manual are unique in some way, and present to the class what your team feels are the most interesting parts of your work.
Most teams use Collaborate to do their presentations, but if they are unable to meet synchronously to do the presentation, then there are other programs/websites that allow groups to make asynchronous presentations, such as Brainshark. When everyone in the team has put in their pieces, then one team member can check it over to be sure that everything works, and that there is a smooth flow to the entire presentation. Here’s a website that lists a number of presentation formats. http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/Presentation+Tools Please check with me before using anything other than Collaborate, to be sure I know how to use the program and can get to your presentation easily.
ASSIGNMENT DUE DATES
(These dates are duplicated in the course organization by week by week on the course website.)
All assignments are due on Sundays before midnight. This means the midnight between Sunday and Monday, not between Saturday and Sunday. Week 1 is the first week of the semester and is not a full seven days, and begins on 8/24/16. Week 2 is the following week, starting on Monday the 29th, and so on. Weeks always start on Mondays, so the Sunday for each week is at the end of the week, and is followed by Monday of the NEXT week.
SINCE YOU DON’T HAVE AN ASSIGNMENT DUE EVERY WEEK, DATES BELOW DO NOT INCLUDE EVERY WEEK IN THE SEMESTER.
- Week 4, 9/18
Chapters 1-4 - Description of the Library Building and its Collection
- Collection Development Statement and Rationale
- Community Assessment Methods and Survey Results
- Types of Materials Available
- Week 6, 10/2
Chapter 5 - Selection Procedures
- Week 7, 10/9
Chapter 6 - Review Sources
- FIRST HALF OF READING LOG IS DUE
- Week 8, 10/16
Chapter 7 - Acquisition Procedures
- Week 9, 10/23
Chapter 8 - Budget
- Week 11, 11/6
Chapter 9 - Evaluation and Weeding Procedures
- Week 12, 11/13
Chapter 10 - Merchandising and Promoting your Collection
- Week 13, 10/20
Chapter 11 - Reconsideration Policy and Procedures
- Week 14, 11/27
- Team presentations
- Final completed and revised policy manual
- SECOND HALF OF READING LOG WITH OVERALL SYNTHESIS
- Week 15, 12/4
- Informal paper
- Team evaluations of your own team and others as assigned
I am willing to be flexible about due dates and will always give you extra time when you ask for it. However, any assignment that does not come in on time when no extension has been requested will be penalized one letter grade for lateness. When in doubt, ask for more time, just in case. You have a huge project before you, and my due dates are designed to keep you caught up, so you don’t have too many things overwhelming you at the end of the semester. However, since I don’t know your personal schedules, or the assignment schedules for other classes, I have not taken them into account, and overlapping may occur.
If you create a website for your assignments, and send me a URL when they are due so I can look at them, and if I cannot open the link, I will let you know about the problem right away, and it MUST be corrected within 48 hours of my email, or your work will be counted as late. Please check your links, and make sure you have published or opened your site so I can examine your work, and check your email to see if I have let you know that there are problems. The best way to resolve this problem is to send me the link ahead of time and verify that I can access your work.
ALL DELAYED OR LATE ASSIGNMENTS MUST BE IN TO ME WITHOUT EXCEPTION NO LATER THAN MIDNIGHT, 12 AM, ON DEC 18 IN ORDER TO SUBMIT GRADES ON TIME. I am willing to be as flexible as I can, but the due date for grade submission MUST be met.
GRADES ARE NOT ROUNDED UP. This means that if you get 95.7, your grade is 95. The gradebook percentages do not always agree with the figures that I get when I figure grades, so at the end of the semester the gradebook percentage may differ from you numerical final grade.
Grading Allocations
- 25% Reading and web work log and synthesis
- 50% Individual project parts, averaged together
- 25% Class participation (including team evaluations and group presentation evaluations), informal paper and final revised project, averaged together
COURSE ORGANIZATION
A document detailing the workload for each week is on the course website.
Course Workload Expectations
Success in this course is based on the expectation that students will spend, for each unit of credit, a minimum of forty-five hours over the length of the course (normally 3 hours per unit per week with 1 of the hours used for lecture) for instruction or preparation/studying or course related activities including but not limited to internships, labs, clinical practica. Other course structures will have equivalent workload expectations as described in the syllabus.
Instructional time may include but is not limited to:
Working on posted modules or lessons prepared by the instructor; discussion forum interactions with the instructor and/or other students; making presentations and getting feedback from the instructor; attending office hours or other synchronous sessions with the instructor.
Student time outside of class:
In any seven-day period, a student is expected to be academically engaged through submitting an academic assignment; taking an exam or an interactive tutorial, or computer-assisted instruction; building websites, blogs, databases, social media presentations; attending a study group;contributing to an academic online discussion; writing papers; reading articles; conducting research; engaging in small group work.
Course Prerequisites
INFO 202, INFO 204.
Course Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of the course, students will be able to:
- Exhibit familiarity with the theoretical and practical issues of resource selection and collection management for libraries and information centers.
- Describe the role and value of collection management and its relationship to other library functions.
- Describe the major forms of cooperative (shared) collection development.
- Develop a rationale for planning the development and management of a collection.
- Assess user information needs in the context of collection management.
- Identify and evaluate literature and other resources pertinent to materials selection and collection management.
- Apply methodologies and skills for selecting resources and evaluating and managing a collection.
- Create and evaluate collection policies.
- Identify the challenges and issues of collection management, such as ownership and access, cultural sensitivity, copyright, and censorship.
Core Competencies (Program Learning Outcomes)
INFO 266 supports the following core competencies:
- A Demonstrate awareness of the ethics, values, and foundational principles of one of the information professions, and discuss the importance of intellectual freedom within that profession.
- B Describe and compare organizational settings in which information professionals practice.
- F Use the basic concepts and principles related to the selection, evaluation, organization, and preservation of physical and digital information items.
- N Evaluate programs and services using measurable criteria.
Textbooks
Required Textbooks:
- Disher, W. (2014). Crash course in collection development (2nd ed.). Libraries Unlimited. Available through Amazon: 1610698134
- Gragory, V.L. (2011). Collection development and management for 21st century collections. Neal-Schuman. Available through Amazon: 1555706517
Recommended Textbooks:
- Evans, G. E., & Saponaro, M.Z. (2012). Collection management basics. Libraries Unlimited. Available through Amazon: 1598848631
- Johnson, P. (2014). Fundamentals of collection development and management (3rd ed.). ALA Editions. Available through Amazon: 0838911919
Grading Scale
The standard SJSU School of Information Grading Scale is utilized for all iSchool courses:
97 to 100 | A |
94 to 96 | A minus |
91 to 93 | B plus |
88 to 90 | B |
85 to 87 | B minus |
82 to 84 | C plus |
79 to 81 | C |
76 to 78 | C minus |
73 to 75 | D plus |
70 to 72 | D |
67 to 69 | D minus |
Below 67 | F |
In order to provide consistent guidelines for assessment for graduate level work in the School, these terms are applied to letter grades:
- C represents Adequate work; a grade of "C" counts for credit for the course;
- B represents Good work; a grade of "B" clearly meets the standards for graduate level work or undergraduate (for BS-ISDA);
For core courses in the MLIS program (not MARA, Informatics, BS-ISDA) — INFO 200, INFO 202, INFO 204 — the iSchool requires that students earn a B in the course. If the grade is less than B (B- or lower) after the first attempt you will be placed on administrative probation. You must repeat the class if you wish to stay in the program. If - on the second attempt - you do not pass the class with a grade of B or better (not B- but B) you will be disqualified. - A represents Exceptional work; a grade of "A" will be assigned for outstanding work only.
Graduate Students are advised that it is their responsibility to maintain a 3.0 Grade Point Average (GPA). Undergraduates must maintain a 2.0 Grade Point Average (GPA).
University Policies
Per University Policy S16-9, university-wide policy information relevant to all courses, such as academic integrity, accommodations, etc. will be available on Office of Graduate and Undergraduate Programs' Syllabus Information web page at: https://www.sjsu.edu/curriculum/courses/syllabus-info.php. Make sure to visit this page, review and be familiar with these university policies and resources.
In order to request an accommodation in a class please contact the Accessible Education Center and register via the MyAEC portal.
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