Collection Management Policies

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Collection Management Policies

Selection Policy
In keeping with the mission of Kansas City Kansas Community College, the Library recognizes its responsibility to serve as an instrument of the college's total instructional program and to serve as a community resource. The primary objective of the KCKCC Library is to support the approved programs of the college through the acquisition of materials appropriate to each field and level of instruction. Special effort will also be made to acquire academic works that are broader in scope than any particular discipline or field of interest defined in the curriculum.

Responsibility for Acquisition
While final decisions regarding acquisitions are made by the Library Director, the responsibility for the selection of library materials lies with the Librarians with the assistance of the entire college community. The Librarians assume responsibility for general overall collection development and for systematically reviewing current and retrospective bibliographies and making selections from them. The Librarians are also responsible for coordinating the collection as a whole, and for providing the faculty with bibliographic assistance. Faculty members, individually or through department representatives, are encouraged and expected to recommend purchases pertinent to their teaching fields. Requests may be submitted via this web site.

Selection Criteria
All recommendations are weighted against selection criteria that include:

  • the author's reputation and significance
  • the importance of the subject matter to the curricula and to the collection
  • the scarcity of materials on the subject
  • the timeliness or permanence of the materials
  • the anticipated use by students
  • appearance of the title in special bibliographies or indexes
  • authoritativeness
  • the reputation of the publisher
  • the price

Gifts
Gifts to the Library are encouraged. Gifts of materials or monetary donations will be accepted only if they meet the selection criteria and there are no restrictions attached to said donations. The Library must be free to decide the fate of all donations.

Weeding and Discarding
In order to insure the quality of the collection, the Library will periodically and systematically "weed" the collection. Obsolete materials, superseded editions, broken files or unindexed journals, superfluous duplicates, no longer meets curriculum needs, and worn-out or badly marked volumes will be withdrawn from the collection and will be discarded in accordance with defined procedures.