What makes a library collection?

Anandita Rao and Nayan Mehrotra

When we think of a library collection, what comes to mind is variety.
As the box of books opened in a community site, each child drew closer, flipping through the books. Hands reached out for the ones they wanted. Comics, books about animals, books about superheroes, folktales, ghost stories; each one’s interest found resonance in some book, and those who didn’t, were quick to request for a topic/theme they wanted while adjusting to what was available, for now ! The children know the library has a wide variety of books.

When we think of a collection what comes to mind is depth.
A few years ago, as part of an in-house exercise, each team member was encouraged to take up a project. The overall project was called ‘Drop everything for the Library’. We drew back to the library and delved into the collection, to explore different aspects that each of us often avoided in favour of more liked ones. The exploration opened out:
• Themes

• Genres
• Paired books

• Outstanding books
• Versions of the same story

• Bilingual books
• Recommended books for Read Aloud

A collection holds the scope for all these explorations and more for everyone who accesses it. We were able to identify gaps in our collection, weed out books that we no longer felt met our thinking about collections and strengthen our understanding.

When we think of a library collection, what comes to mind is connection.
There are books that touch you the moment you open them. The library has had numerous experiences of individuals finding themselves in stories in moments of happiness and emotional responses. For instance, the young reader who found her community in a story based in Kashmir, or another who found himself reflected in the PRIDE books that sit firmly ensconced in our outstanding shelves.

A collection should have books that enable these experiences.

Curation of Collection
The dictionary defines Curation as ‘The action or process of selecting, organizing, and looking after the items in a collection’.

Curation is an act of selection, one of understanding the scope of a collection and a collection development policy, seeing the gaps in the collection and selectively acquiring items to make the collection more comprehensive and/or focused in its coverage. In this a curator is considering and appraising, researching, contextualizing and selecting, constantly searching and refining. (Johnston. 2014)

A public/community library supports a concept of the commons and should therefore provide access to as much as possible, both past and present. But there is a finite amount of resources that a library can provision, a philosophy, an ideology, a framework that often informs a selection and its consequent access. (Noronha. 2021)

At Bookworm, whatever we do draws back to the collection. A large amount of time, resource and space is invested in this, and each book in the collection is carefully chosen. Curation in a library is often very broadly determined by certain key factors, including financial constraints, space constraints and values we choose to honour.

Thus within the constraint of space and budget, and based on shared values of common good and humanity, what we choose to include in a collection forms our curated collection. At Bookworm, some criteria that has formed the basis of this curation is as follows.

Books:
• That bring surprise and joy to the reader for their craft in storytelling.
• That represent as many people/places/experiences as possible.
• That enable us to find ourselves within them in some way.
• That enable us to enter a new world outside our own.
• That are in a variety of genres, themes and forms.
• For all age groups.
• For both readers and non-readers, with more text, less text, all text, all visuals.
• That are from experience, well-written, well-illustrated, and well-designed.
• That represent stories/cultures that were not part of the ‘literate’ world.

Curation has also come to stand for what we choose not to include in a collection. For example, some books that we confidently choose not to include, would be, books:
• That were very obviously of bad quality in terms of print, design, plot.
• That are didactic and stereotypical in what they share.
• Propagating a particular religious practice.
• With obvious and explicit moral connotations.
• That are outdated in information.
• With incorrect information or misrepresentation.

There is also a conscious choice to limit popular books, knowing that they are available in plenty elsewhere.

By acknowledging the role of the library as beyond just a pass-time space, and as a space that is an active learning environment, we place that much more importance on the selection of books. “At that point, you are the creator of the known world. If it cannot be found in your collection, it simply does not exist.” (L, Jacobson)

Classification of Collection
Imagine you are shown a photo of two libraries and asked to select one to visit, which one would you select? Think of the reason why you are choosing a particular library.

Did you make the organization of the collection, the display, and the look of the library your basis to engage or not engage with the collection?

Classification in libraries is one of the fundamental means of making the collection accessible to readers and enticing readers to browse through the books.

However, it will be important to ponder on questions raised by Usha, children’s librarian and mentor to Bookworm.
Q. For whose benefit do we classify or arrange books?
Q. Is there a particular situation in which we are classifying?
Q. It becomes clear that we need to know our clients – age level, interests, searching patterns, particular situations, etc.
Q. How important is it to save the time of the user?
Q. Do we classify under the broadest heading or the narrowest heading? Which makes more sense?
Q. Is searching more important or finding the right book and reading it more important?

Classifying the collection could mean putting the collection in ORDER

Organization or Ordering?
Reader
Display and Arrangement
Engagement
Responsibility and Readiness

Organization or ordering?
For whom are we organizing the collection? What are the different ways of organizing the collection? The organization of the collection can be done at different levels based on the number of books, types of books and users. There can be different indicators one can keep in mind while organizing and classifying the collection.

Here are possible gateways of classifying the collection
a) Developmental Age – Keeping books as per the age group helps in easy identification for children and library person.
b) Genre – categorizing in broad categories of fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
c) Theme – If you have a large collection that can be mapped to different themes then classifying them as per different themes helps to choose books. For example- Death, migration, disability, etc.
d) Language – If your library is catering to multi-lingual readers then you may like to categorize them as per the language.
e) Series – If there are books in series then it helps readers if all the books are kept together for easy browsing.
f) Authors – Keeping books by one author at one place.
g) Award-winning – The books that have won awards can be put together.
h) Recommended books – There might be books that you would like to recommend to readers which can be kept on this shelf.

In our work, we have found this dynamic and we have found blurry lines with a few books. Being open and flexible to learning and listening to the reader’s voices helps to understand the collection better.

Reader
Who are readers who are going to engage with the collection? Listening to readers, understanding their needs can bring the collection alive, make it relevant, and accessible.

Display and arrangement
What makes the reader want to check the shelves? Is mere classifying the books in different ways enough to make the collection accessible?

While arranging the shelves consider showing the front cover of the book, keep in mind the height at which books are placed, using proper signage, etc., which can make the collection more accessible.

Engagement
How can we engage readers with the collection? Identifying various ways of engagement and refreshing them on a periodic basis may help readers to return and discover collections within the library. Playing simple games like a treasure hunt, finding similarities and differences for paired books, etc. The display and classification should invite readers and urge them to pick a book to read.

Responsibility and Readiness
The act of classifying the collection places a great responsibility on the library person to know the collection well to make it accessible for one and all. Additionally, ideating new activities associated with the collection opens the reach to many users.

Conclusion
The work within the library places a great responsibility on the library worker to invest in engaging with books, knowing the collection better and being open. The value and richness of the collection can only be appreciated when it is shared with readers and gives possibilities of engaging with it through discussion and other forms of engagement in the library.

References
• Jacobson, L. (2016). Unnatural Selection: More Librarians are Self Censoring
• Johnston, L. (2014). What could curation possibly mean?
• Noronha, S. (2021). Note for a Censorship webinar

Anandita Rao is a library educator at Bookworm Goa. She can be reached at anandita@bookwormgoa.in.

Nayan Mehrotra is a library educator whose exposure to libraries made her realize the importance of libraries and the possibilities they offer. She has done the Library Educator’s Course from Bookworm, Goa, and is currently working with Bookworm as an academic coordinator for the Libraries in Schools program and Professional Development program. She can be reached at nayan@bookwormgoa.in.