What should you collect?
Building up a collection which preserves the history of the area and gives people tools to understand our past is one of the most satisfying aspects of the local studies librarian’s job and is one by which many future generations will judge us. It is an art, rather than a science.
The Collections Development Policy should guide all of your choices on what you should and should not include in your collection, however a good policy should be clear, but not rigid and inflexible and should be subject to regular review.
The main sections of a Policy are outlined in the Collection Development section of the toolkit, but in order to construct an excellent policy and, as a consequence, develop an excellent collection, you will need to consider a number of aspects and find the right balance for your collection:
- Comprehensiveness – should the aim be to collect all books and pamphlets relating to the geographical area or should their quality, literacy, bias etc be considered? This will probably vary as large city collections will be dealing with a larger number of publications than smaller or more rural libraries.
- Subject collections – as well as books relating directly to the geographical area readers may need more general historical studies to give students a chance to place the development of their area into a wider context.
- Local history and family history manuals and journals – readers will benefit from a selection of books on how to study local and family history and use old documents while journals will help keep them up to date with new ideas.
- Local authors – should works by local authors (fiction and non-fiction) be collected? If limits are to be set on local authors clear criteria should be established. Important collections of material relating to authors of national reputation should be well promoted.
- Creative works set in the area – most local studies libraries would want to include these books.
- Locally printed items – many libraries hold locally printed books, mainly early printed works, private press books and other special categories. (The librarian may need to report relevant items for inclusion in national catalogues such as the English Short Title Catalogue)
- Some libraries have inherited collections which are particularly strong in one subject area, for example dialect poetry, should these areas be built on?
- Some libraries will include special collections which may not immediately seem of direct relevance, for example the books of a local naturalist. These collections may need to be promoted more widely.
- Neighbouring authorities – coordinating collection policies with neighbouring authorities, perhaps especially in the metropolitan counties, might be useful. However, there are cases where there should be overlap and sometimes subtle ones. For example, school children in Slough are given projects on the history of Windsor so general local history books would be suitable, but local historians in Windsor would be very unlikely to use Slough’s collection to study their local area.
- Books as an artefact – books are objects as well as information sources, so you should bear in mind the provenance of particular copies. An extreme example can be found in Islington:
Branch collections
In large geographical areas there may be a need for extensive reference collections in branches and mobile libraries, perhaps including non-book items. Local studies staff need to monitor these collections and may need to create materials for them. Branch collections should only include duplicates – originals or only copies, should go to the centralised collection.
Book selection
Personal contact with local groups and users of the library is an important way of alerting staff to relevant new publications. In a large rural county staff in the general library service should be trained to look out for material.
Social media posts by local groups, especially local history and family history societies, academic institutions and their staff and local newspapers will promote new relevant publications.
Relevant journals and local newspapers are invaluable sources of information about new books. Local history and academic journals will include book reviews and can be very helpful in alerting librarians to new subject areas for study which may in turn lead to a need to search out material to fill gaps in stock. Journal articles relevant to the library’s geographical area should also be added to the collection.
Local and national online bibliographies, such as the Devon Bibliography should be searched.
Current material such as local authority reports, publications by local businesses and other voluntary and official organisations and locally published journals and newsletters should be collected. (These will usually be the most difficult items to track down and acquire).
Acquiring book stock
There must be some way to acquire books and pamphlets from small organisations such as churches and community groups, as well as individual authors, who cannot be added to the local authority payment system. Staff may also need to buy material from fairs and book dealers.
Much local material will have very short print runs so it is important to react quickly to the opportunity to purchase stock. It is important to receive intelligence from branch staff who will often have contacts in their local communities.
Multiple copies of heavily used titles will be required for current and future use and for use in branches.
Second hand book dealers’ lists and Abebooks can be searched to fill gaps in the collection. Bookfinder.com is also excellent at searching large number of dealers, including the Abebooks network and Amazon.
Offering of material between libraries should be practiced and surrogate copies of rare material relevant to other areas should be made available.
Local and regional publishing societies should be supported by subscription as generously as possible as they generally produce significant material of high quality.
Donations from authors – a sign of a successful local studies service is that it becomes an essential tool for local history authors. If prompted, many of which will be delighted to present copies to the library on completion of their project (as well as an acknowledgement in their work).
Other Donations – responsibilities to the donor should be made clear. It should be established that the donation is a gift (or permanent loan?), how it will be used, catalogued and cared for, whether the librarian retains the right to discard it, are there any rights, e.g. copyright, attached to it.
Journals
Local historical and archaeological societies often have their own journals packed with decades and sometimes centuries of articles on obscure aspects of the history of your area. Most collections will have copies of these publications on their shelves, but it is important that the library continues corporate membership of such societies so that new editions volumes can be added to the collections.
Traditionally, local studies collections have indexed these articles, however much of this work is now being done by the Societies themselves. For more information on this subject see: That gem of local studies just starting to be found by Google: local history society journal backruns.
Lending collections
Lending collections of popular and useful books should be created when duplicates are available, both for users of the local studies collection and for the library service in general. The local studies librarian will need to have some input into both aspects so that stock levels remain satisfactory.
e-books
If available, titles should also be purchased for your local authority’s e-book collection. You can also follow Rochdale’s example and look to digitise key works from your book stock and placing those online.
Protection of the book collection
The local studies library will hold rare and unique material, which may be fragile, and has a responsibility to protect it from theft and damage for future generations. For more information on book conservations and storage, see the Conservation section of the Toolkit.
While libraries will not wish to introduce barriers which discourage users some security measures to consider include –
- registering users
- filling out slips for books on closed access
- weighing bundles of documents in and out
- providing a bag store
- tagging items
- restricting users to pencils only and using book cushions for very old or fragile items
- providing surrogates for fragile items (including facsimile books)
It is vital to have comprehensive supervision of the reading room
Use of technology such as tagging, CCTV, creating surrogates etc gives the opportunity to improve researchers’ experience by allowing more books to be kept on open access.
If books are removed for reprographic or exhibition purposes steps to ensure their security must be taken
Special care should be taken to avoid damage by photocopying etc. The use of a digital camera is almost always better for the book.
Major repairs and binding should be done by specialist conservators. See Conservation section of the Toolkit.
Disposal of unwanted book stock
The decision to dispose of local studies material should never be taken lightly. It should be recognised that preparing and documenting material for disposal involves time and expense.
There are very useful guidelines for the disposal of rare books on the Bibliographical Society website.
Before an item is disposed of by gift or sale various checks are necessary
- Does the library have the authority or ethical right to sell the item?
- Is it a genuine duplicate not a variant edition, specially annotated, the only copy with all its illustrations intact etc?
- Will the disposal do reputational damage to the library?
- Should it be offered to another library or rare books collection? As well as neighbouring authorities, the National Library of Scotland, National Library of Wales and National Library of Ireland and the National Archive’s library team may welcome material not held in their collection. The same can be true for other Special Collections, for example the National Aerospace Library collects material on all aspects of aviation. Details of specialist collections can be found in Karen Attar (ed), Directory of Rare Book and Special Collections in the UK and Republic of Ireland, Facet Publishing, whilst a list of professional and learned society libraries can be found here.
- If the decision is taken to sell the best possible price should be obtained and the income should benefit the library.
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CILIP Local Studies Group 