Policies and Procedures

Approved by Library Committee 12/6/2019 Adopted by President’s Cabinet 12/13/19

The Library's primary goals are to participate and assist in the mission of East Georgia State College (EGSC) by acquiring holdings appropriate to the mission of a two-year academic institution. To fulfill this goal, the collections of books (print and electronic), media (CDs, videos, and DVDs), and periodicals (print and electronic), must be of sufficient number and of appropriate scholarly merit to be able to define the overall collection as academic in quality.

Collection development consists of two components: building the collection through purchases and donations, and, weeding the collection. Weeding will be based on the official Weeding Policy. 

The collection development policy recognizes the importance to take the needs and reading habits of faculty, students, and staff into account. The Library solicits and receives most of the purchase requests from the teaching faculty but certainly accepts requests from students and staff. This effort guarantees that the collection develops as a multi-faceted effort, embracing the largest possible array of values.

• The library staff is responsible for ensuring that the collection meets the academic needs of students and faculty. All members of the library staff contribute to collection development. The staff select titles for purchase, both print and electronic, based on the following criteria:

1) content supports the college's curricula

2) reputation of author and or publisher

3) need of current collection in that discipline

4) price

The library staff concentrates on enhancing all sections of the collection and shares information received about new publications in various disciplines with Deans to gather opinions and suggestions for possible purchase. Faculty members are encouraged to submit requests for purchase and solicited through email prior to purchases being made. Requests are also accepted from students and staff.

The Library's budget is not allocated based on disciplines or by Schools (Mathematics and Natural Sciences; Humanities and Social Sciences); therefore the faculty who actively participate in collection development usually have their requests fulfilled which results in some areas having a larger and more current collection.

Books that are lost, stolen, or damaged are replaced based on usefulness and availability. Gifts and donations will be added to the collection if they support the instructional needs and/or reading desires of the college. A letter of thanks will be sent to the donor listing the titles, but a monetary value will not be assessed. Titles that are out of print are searched for and purchased via Amazon.com.

Local resources are greatly enhanced by information accessed electronically. EGSC Library users have access to almost 620,135 electronic (e-book) titles provided by EBSCO eBooks and ProQuest E-book Central. GALILEO, an initiative within the University System of Georgia, provides access to over 200 databases, of which over fifty are reference sources. Most of the databases on GALILEO are periodical indexes many of which provide full text articles. Several of the databases provide access to chapters and essays in monograph titles as well as articles in periodicals. The college participates in selecting the collections provided in GALILEO through RACL (Regents Academic Committee on Libraries) surveys within the system. In addition to GALILEO, the library purchases six additional electronic databases from Gale/Cengage Learning, JSTOR, Elsevier, Overdrive, and Rittenhouse.

The print periodical collection, like the book and electronic collections, is based mostly on suitability and usefulness in a two-year college. A few of the periodical titles are leisure and recreational reading. Having 'easy reading' items available will encourage reading and will make the library a more inviting place to study and begin research. The library staff consults Magazines for Libraries but more so depends on suggestions made by the faculty who are encouraged to suggest the names of journals, magazines, and newspapers to which they believe the library should subscribe, and likewise, to suggest the cancellation of titles that are no longer useful.

• Most of the periodical subscriptions are handled by an outside subscription service. A few are purchased directly from a publisher or organization. Those subscriptions that offer free online access are linked on the library's webpage for easy access.

To ensure that all academic units of the college are equally represented in collection building and its component activity, collection weeding, the college maintains a standing Library Committee. The committee includes one faculty member from each School’s unit (Humanities, Social Sciences, Math, and Sciences), one staff member, the Librarian, and the Library Director. This group meets periodically to discuss matters related to collection needs and library services.

• Faculty members on the committee act as liaisons between their respective units and the library staff. Faculty, therefore, may seek input into library operations through their divisional representatives on the committee.