IX. Policies for Specific Collections

Children’s Collection

The collection has three categories: picture books (including juvenile easy books), juvenile and young adult fiction, and nonfiction. Award winners, including the Caldecott, Newbery, Coretta Scott King, and others, are purchased for the collection each year. Gifts are occasionally added. Hutchins Library also purchases materials about children's literature, but these are added to the general and reference collections, not the children's collection.

Most of the children's collection is in English, although there are some books in Spanish. The Spanish department utilizes these resources in their lower level classes. The collection does not include periodicals or media.

Electronic Resources

The primary purpose of Hutchins Library’s electronic resources collection is to support the curriculum goals of Berea College. A secondary emphasis of the collection is to support the College’s dedication to liberal arts education, multicultural diversity, and the research needs of students and faculty. Electronic resources, including journals, books, indexes, aggregating resources, and websites, are selected to fulfill academic curriculum needs. They are chosen according to the same selection criteria as print materials, plus sustainability of cost, value added, and ease of access and use. Websites available at no cost are selected according to the same criteria as gift books and the general collection. Free websites of limited interest (time sensitive, course-specific focus) are regarded as analogous to course reserves: a quick record may be added to BANC, but the website is not considered part of the Hutchins Library collection.

General and Recreational Reading Collections

Hutchins Library’s mission is to develop and maintain a strong, balanced collection responsive to the myriad needs of the campus and community. This includes acquisition of books that, although they may not relate directly to the current curriculum, contribute to a varied collection of quality fiction and nonfiction. It also includes some attention to purely recreational and leisure reading, although patrons are directed to the Berea branch of the Madison County Public Library for a more extensive collection of this type. The library faculty assumes the chief responsibility for both the general collection and the leisure reading collection, though suggestions by faculty, students, and other patrons are welcome.

“General collection” refers to high quality recent books that will be of interest beyond the immediate future. These are books that may or may not be directly relevant for current classes and that may be read incidentally for recreational purposes. Good candidates for the general collection are prize-winning titles (e.g., Pulitzer, Booker, Pen/Faulkner, National Book Award, etc.) and others that meet a standard of quality as determined by reviews and authors’ reputations.

“Popular reading collection” refers to books that are primarily for leisure reading, such as mystery novels, science fiction, and popular nonfiction. Most titles in this category are in the collection for a limited time and receive minimal processing. The popular reading collection includes leased books, paperbacks, and other selected items. Worn or damaged volumes are discarded and not replaced.

Government Documents

Hutchins Library does not participate in the Federal Depository Library Program, nor is it a state documents repository. The library does subscribe to selected government documents that support the curriculum. Agriculture and Natural Resources, SENS, and Sociology are among the disciplines directly utilizing government documents and information.

Documents produced by the United States federal, state, and local governments, along with those produced by the United Nations and other international agencies such as the World Bank, are included in this collection. Collection development also focuses on identifying Internet sites offering access to basic government documents, such as Columbia University’s “U.S. Government Documents Ready Reference Collection.”

The collection’s primary purpose is to provide access to current, basic state government documents for the states within Berea College’s designated service area and access to major federal documents from select lists such as “GPO’s 100 Essential Documents in Print.” Hutchins Library aims to maintain its established government document monographic serial collections while improving BANC access to these collections.

Government documents may be either print or digital. The preferred format for major statistical and demographics resources such as The Statistical Abstract is print.

Selection criteria include frequency and ease of use. Purchase price and processing costs of the documents are also considerations.

Media Collection

The primary purpose of Hutchins Library’s audiovisual collection is to support the educational programs of Berea College. A secondary emphasis of the collection is to support the College’s dedication to liberal arts education and multicultural diversity as well as the research needs of the students and faculty. Audiocassettes, videocassettes, audio compact discs, DVDs, and multimedia are selected to fulfill academic curriculum needs. The same criteria for selecting monographs are used for the selection of library media.

Periodicals and Serials

Regional, national, and international journals and newspapers are collected in print, microform, and digital formats. While many periodicals are held and retained in print, a growing portion of the collection is digital, primarily in the form of online databases obtained by Hutchins Library or via cooperative agreements. Future purchases of individual publications in digital formats are a possibility. A few publications are purchased in microform only.

Because of Hutchins Library's ongoing financial commitment to current journal and newspaper subscriptions, requests for new subscriptions are considered with great care. The Acquisitions/Serials Librarian is responsible for evaluating requests in consultation with the library collection development liaison and the department/program liaison.

Hutchins Library does not bind journal titles available through stable digital archival sources (e.g. JSTOR, Project Muse, American Chemical Society, BioOne, and Annual Reviews). The print issues for these titles are generally retained for browsing until the issues are available electronically. BANC indicates how long print issues are retained.

Hutchins Library subscribes to a few popular magazine titles with limited scholarly content. These titles are retained unbound for up to seven years. BANC indicates the retention policy for these titles.

All print subscriptions are reviewed every few years by the appropriate collection development liaison. Candidates for cancellation are reviewed with the Acquisitions/Serials Librarian and the department/program. When reviewing titles the liaison considers the following:

• Does the title still support the curriculum?
• How does the title complement full-text online resources?
• Does the library have an index that includes the title?
• If the title is available online, is the source stable?
• Are the annual price increases for the title reasonable?
• If the title were cancelled, would the library be able to provide adequate support for the department/program's curriculum?
  

Policy last amended 8 February 2005.