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A COMMUNITY CURATED COLLECTION IN AN ACADEMIC LIBRARY: �EMPOWERING STUDENTS THROUGH COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT

RANDYN A. HEISSERER-MILLER (he/him/his)

Head of Collection Strategies

The Acquisitions Institute

at Timberline Lodge

May 22, 2022

Hello! My name is Randyn Heisserer-Miller. Pronouns: He, him, his. I am currently the Head of Collection Strategies at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

I want to start by thanking you for being here today and AITL for inviting me to speak on what I think is an important and timely consideration for academic library collection development: community curated collections through student engagement. It is truly an honor.

My hope is that this case study will provide you and you libraries with the genesis for innovative thinking in how we can further engage our communities to build better collections and encourage participation and buy-in from those we serve.

Before we get started, I do want to clarify: the work presented here was done at Kent Library at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. This past October I took the opportunity to move into my new position at Colorado State University before this work could be made public.

We are in the process of implementing a similar student organization grant program at CSU Libraries this coming fall semester. Once initialized, I hope to tie these programs together in a forthcoming paper presenting the results of this work and comparing the engagement levels between an R1 institution and a smaller regional university.

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STUDENT ENGAGEMENT POLL

Does your library

engage students

in

collection development?

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STUDENT ENGAGEMENT POLL

How many of you believe engaging students in collection development would be a difficult to sell?

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CHANGING DYNAMICS

Universities face declining enrollment and corporatization; focus on student success

Academic libraries begin to focus on student services

Funneling money and space away from collections

Library resource services left out of equation

Photo credit: https://cssh.northeastern.edu/research/opportunities

As we begin to look at this case study, I’d like to set the stage to give perspective on how these initiatives came to be.

Over the past few decades universities have faced declining enrollments with stiffer competition for the ever-shrinking pool of high school graduates. This coupled with a welcome focus on the needs of first-generation and underserved student populations, universities have renewed or even begun for the first time to focus efforts and resources on student success.

This has brought about strategic planning focused on answering the questions of what students, in this new paradigm, need to be successful not only in the post-graduate world but as students navigating academia for the first time. Many givens are being questioned, forcing out-of-the-box thinking when it comes to student services and engagement.

Academic libraries are following this focus by asking themselves how they can best serve students and reach traditionally underserved populations. In many cases, this work has focused limited library resources onto user services.

Increased need for collaborative spaces, technology, and seating has caused the physical collections of the libraries to be dramatically consolidated, sent to storage, and/or weeded (sometimes much needed) to free-up square feet for other library services. Additionally, collections budgets have been reallocated to sure up funding to create these physical spaces and/or cut due to funding constraints.

In my experience, this has left library resources out of the student services equation. As a collections development librarian, this, to me, is a mistake and exposes a limited understanding of the library’s collection as a service tool for students.

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SOUTHEAST

Small regional university on the Mississippi River

FTE of 7,764 in Fall 2021

$1.7m collections budget

6% FY19 reduction in Library Budget

12% FY21 reduction

Total of 25% since 2015, 20% from collections

Photo credit:

www.krcu.org

Changing higher education dynamics was the case at Southeast Missouri State University when I began working there in 2017.

Southeast Missouri State University is a small regional university located on the Mississippi River near the “bootheel” of Missouri. The university’s 2021 full-time equivalent enrollment is 7,764, down from just over 11,000 in the fall of 2017

In 2017, the Missouri State legislature, under a new governor, began making major cuts to the States funding for higher education. This was acutely felt by Kent Library’s collections budget.

At the end of fiscal year 19, under a mandate from the President of the university, all department budgets were swept to secure funding for the University’s funding shortfall due to a state funds withholding from the Governor. This eliminated about $100,000 from the library’s collection budget of $1.7million or about 6%. These funds represented intentional savings the library had accumulated to cover inflation costs.

This sweep created the need for a review of all e-resources in the Fall of 2020 to ensure a revenue surplus to cover FY21 inflation.

The need to reduce resources was further compounded by a new directive from the President of Southeast Missouri State for Academic Affairs, which the library fell under, to cut 12% of its overall budget in FY21. The library was not spared. These two cuts represented a 18% reduction in library funding adding to a total revenue reduction for the library since 2015 of 25%, 20% directly from collections.

With this financial backdrop in mind and a dire need to use what funds we had as strategically as possible, as Acquisitions Manager, I sought a new way to create opportunities for the unit to become more visible and serve students in a tangible way. I began to investigate a way for us to engage the students at Southeast to build collaboration and a more community curated collection.

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THE PLAN

Carrie Woodburn Johnson Endowment Grants for faculty already existed

Faculty-driven collection development

Librarians not engaged in collection development

Student and librarian engagement; unit visibility

Two student engagement initiatives:

“What Would You Like to Read About?”
Johnson Endowment Grants to Student Groups

Photo credit:

www.semissourian.com

Since 2009 Kent Library has had the fortune of being able to offer grants to faculty through the use of the Carrie Woodburn Johnson Endowment. These grants are used to purchase research or teaching materials based on individual faculty needs.

Additionally, and somewhat uniquely, Southeast still operates under the century's old faculty-driven collection development model. Meaning academic department faculty select materials for the library's collection rather than librarians. The Acquisitions Unit allocates library materials funds each year to individual academic departments. These departments, with autonomy, create lists of materials they feel build the collection for their department’s needs. The Acquisitions Unit collects these lists of monographs, eBooks, films, and kits and orders them.

All one-time purchases for the library were handled through this system.

With the endowment and a faculty-driven collection development system the librarians at Southeast are virtually uninvolved in collection development. The librarians only maintain collection responsibilities over resources that require an ongoing commitment such as journal and databases subscriptions as well as some special collections like the Reference Collection. This means a great deal of academic faculty involvement in the library, but also creates problems when topics of deselection or budgetary reductions are discussed.

In an attempt to thread three needles at once: student engagement, unit visibility, and librarian involvement in collection development, I turned to how we could create new opportunities. From this was born two initiatives that strove to answer these needs: the “What Would You Like to Read About?” program that allowed the student body to choose a subject area for collection enhancement and the Johnson Endowment Grants for Student Groups that allowed student organizations to request materials that would support their groups' work.

We’ll look at each of these in a little more detail.

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SUBJECT AREA NOMINATION PROGRAM�"What Would You Like to Read About?"

First Year of Program: Fall 2019

Annual Cost: $3,000 / $1,000

Fall 2019 Winning Topic: Bestselling Young Adult Novels

Fall 2020 Winning Topic: Foreign Language Instruction

Program was put on hold for Fall 2021due to budgetary constraints.

Nominated areas:

History of transgendered and gender-non-conforming persons, acquiring foreign languages, sports history; tele-practice/tele-health, early intervention of speech and language, consciousness/spirituality, Marxism, and illustration

In the spring of 2019, I wrote a proposal that was approved by the Dean of Kent Library for implementation in the fall of 2019 which included the creation of a subject area nomination program called “What Would You Like to Read About?”.

Initially, the subject area nomination program was budgeted for $3,000 to be spent on a subject area nominated and voted on by the general student body at Southeast Missouri State University.

After the nomination and voting process was completed between September and November, a librarian, who volunteered, would select materials in the chosen subject area, using the $3,000.

The first year of the program saw ten subject areas nominated. All ten areas were put onto an electronic ballot with young adult bestselling novels winning the most votes.

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2019 VOTING RESULTS

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SUBJECT AREA NOMINATION PROGRAM�"What Would You Like to Read About?"

First Year of Program: Fall 2019

Annual Cost: $3,000 / $1,000

Fall 2019 Winning Topic: Bestselling Young Adult Novels

Fall 2020 Winning Topic: Foreign Language Instruction

Program was put on hold for Fall 2021due to budgetary constraints.

Nominated areas:

History of transgendered and gender-non-conforming persons, acquiring foreign languages, sports history; tele-practice/tele-health, early intervention of speech and language, consciousness/spirituality, Marxism, and illustration

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STUDENT GROUP GRANT PROGRAM�Johnson Endowment Grants for Student Groups

First Year of Program: Fall 2019

Annual Cost: $3,000 / $3,000 / $1,000

Grant Recipients:

Fall 2019 - National Student Speech Language and Hearing Association and Student Dietetic Association

Fall 2020 - Black Student Union; Finance and Economics Club; and Law, Politics, and Society

Fall 2021- National Student Speech Language and Hearing Association

The second program started in the fall of 2019 was the student group grant program. We initially budgeted $3,000 for the first year with the intent of awarding two grants or $1,500 each. The second year that budget was cut to $2,000 or two $1,000 grants, but due to the applicant pool composition, we chose to award an additional $1,000 grant. This past year only one grant was awarded for $1,000.

This program was mimicked after the faculty grant program that had been established for decades that I mentioned previously.

We created an application that the student groups had to fill out.

They were asked to justify their request by answering the following questions:

1.) reason for request

2.) how materials would aid in the purpose of the group

3.) how the materials would improve the library’s collection

4.) how the requested items were identified.

They were also asked to create a list of materials they wanted with pricing.

Most importantly we asked that they collaborate with a Kent Library librarian. We did this to try and incentivize more student work with librarians as a resource, and to create more librarian engagement in collection development.

Ultimately, to ensure proper oversight a librarian’s and the group’s faculty/staff sponsor’s signature was required for the application to be considered.

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NSSLHA APPLICATION ANSWERS

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NSSLHA APPLICATION ANSWERS

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STUDENT GROUP GRANT PROGRAM�Johnson Endowment Grants for Student Groups

First Year of Program: Fall 2019

Annual Cost: $3,000 / $3,000 / $1,000

Grant Recipients:

Fall 2019 - National Student Speech Language and Hearing Association and Student Dietetic Association

Fall 2020 - Black Student Union; Finance and Economics Club; and Law, Politics, and Society

Fall 2021- National Student Speech Language and Hearing Association

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SCORING GRID

Here we have a screen capture of the scoring grid for the 2020 application pool. This grid was used by the Collection Development and Management Committee who evaluated the applications each year.

The committee was comprised of six librarians who based their evaluation on three criteria:

1.) evidence of need

2.) consistency with department and university teaching learning goals objectives

3.) the availability of resources

These criteria were reviewed as they were depicted in the answer to the three application questions.

For this second year of the program, we edited the application, eliminating the question of “How were these materials identified?” to help ease barriers for applicants based on applicant feedback from 2019. Some felt this question implied a need to do extra work – like the NSSLHA organization did – and created a hardship real or perceived.

Since the overall point was to build relationships with students, we wanted to ensure that while we still asked for justification of some sort, we were not overly burdening the students. We felt responding to feedback was critical to ensuring our participation was not dampened by overly burdensome requirements. We wanted to be responsive.

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TIMELINE

August

Promotional materials edited / created

Webpage edits are finalized

September

After Labor Day

Programs are announced through email, social media, library's website, and university calendar

October

First week

Deadline for subject area nominations

October

Second week

Voting for nominated subject areas starts

November

First week

Voting for subject area nominations closes
Deadline for student groups to submit grant applications

November

Second Week

Volunteer Librarian begins creating list of materials to purchase in winning subject area
Grant award committee is given access to student group applications and scoring grid

December

First Week

List of Materials is due to Acquisitions for ordering
Grant award committee meets to finalize award decisions

December

Third Week

Acquisitions finishes order all materials

February

New materials are processed and on display ready for check-out

The timeline for both programs was the fall semester of each academic year. Though fall semesters are busy, we felt this would allow the materials to be available for students before they graduated in May providing a more immediate and tangible reward for their participation.

In August and really throughout the summer, the Acquisitions Unit which coordinated the programs, worked to ensure the coming cycles promotional materials was edited and updated as needed. This included putting in graphic design requests for new materials, updating email lists, editing press releases, updating the subject area nomination form, and student group grant applications.

In September the programs were announced after Labor Day and using a schedule of publicity including emails and social media posts setting each programs announcements so that they would not be confused and stay “refreshed” in the university promotional ether.

For the subject area program, nominations were due by the first week of October. The second week of October we had had time to create the subject area ballot so voting to start. This required a new promotional push as well.

The first week of November saw two major deadlines: subject area voting and applications for the student group grants. Once the voting results were finalized we then sent the volunteer librarian the winning subject area and they began creating a list of materials. The student group application pool and scoring grid was opened to the grant award committee after some processing during this week as well.

Subject area material lists were due to the Acquisitions Unit by the end of the first week of December. This was also when the committee met to finalize student group grant awards. All material lists were submitted to Acquisitions and ordered “on rush” before the holiday break at the end of December.

If all went well, the new materials were processed and put on display, ready for check out, by the start of the spring semester.

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Photo credit:

E. Rudloff, Kent Library at Southeast Missouri State University

Design credit:

D. Marie-Wood Barr,

Graphic Designer

Kent Library, Southeast Missouri State University

PROMOTION

To promote the programs we used any and all means at our disposal. Messaging is hard on a university campus. Students are overwhelmed with announcements, deadlines, and programs vying for their engagement. We knew we needed a consistent and multi-pronged approach.

To begin with, we partnered with the Campus Life and the Dean of Student’s offices to help us send out bi-weekly email and social media announcements as well as student activity calendar entries for the deadlines to both programs.

At the suggestion of a staff member, we placed an a-frame whiteboard in a heavily trafficked area of Kent Library that asked anyone passing by to write down a nominated subject area and provided a tiny-URL and QR code to the nomination form. On the opposite side we had a tiny URL for the student group application directing them to the nearby Reference or Circulation Desk for further help. Those working at both access points were direct to send students to the Acquisitions Unit if they were unable to answer any inquiry.

To make these programs more visible to students a temporary location was created for the materials. Requested materials were placed there until the next year’s programs cycles were completed. The previous years materials were integrated into the main collection and the newly selected materials replaced them. Book plates were added to the materials to furthur designated their reason for addition.

I have included pictures of this temporary location – next to the “new books” display at the end of the presentation.

We created placards to place on the display, as you see here, that not only designated where these materials came from and why they were there, but also creating the messaging that “you spoke, we listened”. I felt this was important for the students to see that the library was engaging them in a real way and to have a visual queue that their participation brought on real results.

Particularly on a college campus, it is hard to see real effects of one's actions. Students being able to see a tangible result of their efforts – books they chose put on display in the library – seemed like an obvious reality to promote.

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Design credit:

D. Marie-Wood Barr,

Graphic Designer

Kent Library, Southeast Missouri State University

The library’s graphic design unit designed and placed sliders – like you see here - on its main webpage announcing the programs linking to the various forms and program webpages as needed. We also planned regular social media announcements for each stage to help raise awareness. We also placed posters throughout campus.

When it came to voting on the nominated subject areas, the liaison librarians who were teaching information literacy sessions did an amazing job of incentivizing their sessions to vote, by bribing them with candy.

Due to COVID and virtual instruction, that same level of engagement was not possible during the second year of the program. Of all we did, the in-person engagement of students - with candy - was the most effective promotional tool. Unsurprisingly.

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Photo credit:

The Arrow at Southeast Missouri State University

www.southeastarrow.com

In a promotional boon for us was, the Southeast Missouri University student lead newspaper – The Arrow – covered these programs not once, but twice!

As part of the initial push in year one we were able to get a student reporter to help us announce these new programs in an August article. A different reporter came back to us in the spring to write a follow-up and complementary article about new materials added to the collection.

We tried hard to make sure that when each new phase of the programs started we connected, as best we could, again with the students. This included insuring that winning subject areas were announced through the same channels as the programs start, and that all student groups were alerted to the winning groups that year. I felt this critical to show follow-through and commitment.

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OUTCOMES

	2019		2020	2021	Total
Items Added to the Collection
Subject Area		157	52	0	209
Grants		24	51	11	86
Total		181	103	11	295
Amount Spent on Student Selected Items
Subject Area		$2,114	$1,024	0	$3,139
Grants		$1,947	$2,695	$1,017	$5,660
Total		$4,061	$3,720	$1,017	$8,799

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OUTCOMES

	2019	2020	2021	Total
Student Engagement: Subject Area
Nominations	10	4	0	14
Votes	66	24	0	90
Student Engagement: Grants
Applications	2	5	1	8
Awards	2	3	1	6

On this slide we’re looking at real student engagement for these two programs.

While the numbers may seem low, I will note that this doesn’t take into consideration students that were passively engaged through the promotion nor the associated effects of these programs. While that number is impossible to come to, I think it is fair to say that we were engaging – at some level – far more students than those who actually participate.

I would like to also point out the 66 votes for the first year of the subject area program – when the liaison librarians promoted and incentivized participation during their information literacy sessions. I believe over three-quarters of those votes were obtained within a full week of sessions around the Halloween holiday with appropriate seasonal candy.

I do not present usage data here because unfortunately we only had two months of these programs' materials being available for check-out before Covid-19 closed the campus.

I will say here that the engagement of the students was real. Actively or passively, the number of questions answered at the Reference Desk and emails received demonstrated that we were engaging the students in a new and exciting way.

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TAKEAWAYS

Students welcome the opportunity to contribute

Responsiveness, consistency, and commitment are key to success

Some faculty will not agree with spending money on student requests

Student engagement is critical for academic library vitality

New avenue for DEISJ outreach and partnerships

Photo credit:

E. Rudloff, Kent Library at Southeast Missouri State University

What were our takeaways from these programs?

First, students welcomed the opportunity to contribute. Given Kent Library’s pre-existing level of engagement with students, these programs were a success. Before we started these programs the library only engaged students passively or through ill attended colloquia or other one-off activities. These programs provided consistent ways for students to engage in the library and feel the library was giving their voices real consideration. I believe with time and further promotion; these programs can help bolster student buy-in and library engagement.

Second, responsiveness, consistency, and commitment are key to success. We found that parts of the original application process were to cumbersome for some applicants. Each year we re-evaluated the application and process to see where we could eliminate barriers for students and be responsive to their feedback. We wanted to ensure that we connected and formed relationships. This required work to ensure we were balancing participation requirements with ease of applying.

These programs at Kent Library have been in existence for only three years with the subject area program being put on hold for this past academic year. To really experience the value of programs like these the long view must be taken. In an academic setting, one, two, or three years of any initiative, let alone during a pandemic, will not appear successful. You really need at least five years of a program’s existence with consistent and committed work toward its success for it to be fully realized. We found when we were fully engaged in these programs we saw more participation and success. I glad that I am able to test this understanding at Colorado State as we implement the student group grants.

Third, some faculty will not feel great about the library purchasing materials students have requested. Particularly after the library spent $3,000 on bestselling young adult novels the first year of the subject area program, some faculty expressed concern with the “quality” of the purchase. Surely, buying materials selected by students will not meet traditional standards for consideration set by faculty. Obviously, there has to be a balance between purchasing materials that support traditional research and teaching and, if we are to engage students where they are, with what their academic and non-academic needs are.

The student group grant program really broadened my understanding of what academic libraries should be purchasing with two requests in particular.

First, the Dietetics Student Association application requested food kits to use for demonstration purposes when teaching about nutrition and portion size. Second, the Student Kinesiology and Recreation Group requested course survey kits to use in setting up physical training courses. Both were items I would never have considered as a collection development librarian, nor do I believe a faculty member would consider a library needing to have for student use.

Fourth, student engagement is critical for academic library vitality. When we look back on three years of these programs and what was requested by the students and what was ultimately added to the collection, we can see a distinct trend. Students were requesting materials both academic and other that neither academic faculty nor librarians were considering when planning collection development. This fact, to me, illustrates the need for libraries to engage students in what they need to succeed because often we as trained academics do not adjust to those modern needs.

Rather it be books to help first time English speakers, objects to teach hearing impaired children, or food models for teaching nutrition; these items fall under the radar of our current selection systems. By empowering students we are not only engaging them in collection development, we are making current systems more responsive, useful, and diverse.

Lastly, these programs provided new avenues for diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice outreach and partnerships. The Black Student Union was awarded the additional student group grant in 2020.

Despite that year having funding reduced and awards cut, when we received their application, we saw it as an opportunity to dig in and support their work while also adding more inclusion to our collection. We agreed to award their grant and asked a librarian on the committee to volunteer to do some outreach.

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BSU REQUESTED MATERIALS

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QUESTIONS

1.) Is the student voice important for academic libraries as they consider student success?

Why or why not?

Photo credit:

www.southeastmissourian.com

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QUESTIONS

2.) As the landscape changes, are programs like these – that engage students in collection development – important for library vitality and buy-in?

Why or why not?

Photo credit:

www.krcu.org

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QUESTIONS

3.) What are ways that your library could engage students or engage students more fully in collection development?

Photo credit:

Southeast Missouri State University

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THANK YOU!

Contact Information:

Randyn Heisserer-Miller

Head of Collection Strategies

Colorado State University – Fort Collins

randyn.heisserer-miller@colostate.edu

970-491-8876

Photo credit:

E. Rudloff, Kent Library at Southeast Missouri State University