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Metuchen Public Library

Collection Development Policy

A.Purpose

A collection development policy creates guidelines for the building of collections of materials that meet accepted standards of quality, and are relevant to the community served. It aids in the selection, acquisition, and maintenance of the collection. It helps answer questions about the presence or absence of materials in the collection and helps explain the basis on which materials are selected.

B.   General Principles

This collection development policy affirms the Library Bill of Rights, the Freedom to Read, and the Freedom to View Statements of the American Library Association.

The goals of the selection process are to maintain a well-balanced and broad collection of materials appropriate for the current and future use of the residents of the Borough of Metuchen and other library visitors. The collection attempts to offer the community a wide variety of subject matters stating a variety of points of view and providing a general level of coverage in all areas of knowledge. The collection is supplemented by access to electronic resources, the interlibrary loan network, and by direct access to other libraries.

Acquisition of any item does not imply endorsement of the contents by the Library. The selection of materials for children to read or view is the responsibility of their parents or guardians. The entire collection is available to readers of all ages and abilities.

C.    Our Community

The Metuchen Public Library serves a diverse community of residents plus others who may work in the Borough or visit the Library.

The Library is a member of the Libraries of Middlesex Automation consortium, the Libraries of Middlesex, MURAL, and participates in other arrangements which permit residents to use other libraries.

D.    User Needs Supported

All materials, whether purchased or donated, are considered in terms of the criteria listed below to meet the following purposes:

  1. Contribution to the diversity and scope of the collection
  2. Contemporary significance
  3. Relevance to the needs and interests of the public
  4. Support for continuous self-education
  5. Support to meet Information needs through reference services, using non-fiction collection, digital and electronic resources
  6. Complement formal education from preschool through college
  7. Support to the educational, civic, business, and cultural activities
  8. Support to the improvement of job related skills
  9. Support to preserve and make access to the local history of Metuchen

E.   General Priorities

Although most of the Library’s users expect to find materials in English, the Library also acquires materials in other languages.

Materials related to contemporary issues are emphasized.

Materials are selected from positive reviews in professional review sources such as but not limited to, Library Journal, Booklist, and School Library Journal. Staff recommendations, community and individual suggestions will also be taken into consideration.

The Library purchases additional copies of titles in demand. Cost, subject matter, and the multiplicity of holds are factors in duplication.

F.   Selection Criteria

The Library recognizes its obligation to serve the needs of a community with varied backgrounds, reading tastes, interests, abilities, and purposes.

General considerations include: community needs, literary quality, authenticity, diversity, relevance, contemporary significance or permanent value, importance of subject matter, apparent authority of the author, readability, popularity of approach and subject, scarcity of information in the subject area, relation of work to the existing collection, availability of the materials elsewhere, and price.

In selecting children’s materials, in addition to the above, illustration, good visual design and format are important criteria as is appropriateness for the intended audience.

The criteria for selecting electronic databases are their educational and informational value, currency, and accessibility to a variety of users.

EBooks, e-audio, digital music and video collections will be a focus for development during the upcoming years. Selection decisions will be made based on the quality of material, potential popularity, and the platforms requested by the community.

Materials selected should exhibit non-stereotypical attitudes although new editions of classics and some titles which reflect the attitudes of other times or other cultures may be acceptable.

Providing textbooks and curriculum materials is the responsibility of the schools. Textbooks may be purchased when they are the best or only source of information on the subject.

G.   Collection Maintenance: Withdrawal, Disposition and Replacement

The Library evaluates the materials in its collection on a regular basis to determine if they are meeting the needs of its patrons. Methods used may include: analysis of turnover rates by subject, availability and usage checks of titles, checks of holdings of titles from selected bibliographies, patron satisfaction questionnaires, or other means.

Weeding is an integral part of the collection development cycle. In general, the Library follows the guidelines set by the CREW Method. The CREW method recommends a formula for withdrawal of specific types of material based on a combination of age, usage, and the following factors:

M Misleading or inaccurate U Ugly, worn, beyond repair
S Superseded by a newer edition or different work
T Trivial or little merit
I Irrelevant to community needs
E Easily available elsewhere

Withdrawn materials in acceptable condition will be given to the Friends of the Metuchen Public Library or other agencies for sale.
A replacement is an item purchased to replace a title that has been withdrawn because of loss, damage, or wear. Replacements are not made automatically but are decided based upon general selection criteria. Damaged books of intrinsic value that are no longer in print or that have high replacement costs are rebound if the physical conditions permit.

H.   Interlibrary Loan and Cooperation 

The Library cooperates with other local libraries in the Libraries of Middlesex Automation Consortium, other individual and library systems in the State and other States to provide interlibrary loan service to Library users. Interlibrary loan is not intended as a substitute for providing books and other materials in frequent demand, but as a means to supplement the collection by providing access to those materials which are less frequently requested, no longer available for purchase, or outside the guidelines set forth in this collection development policy.

I.    Responsibility

Final authority for the determination of policies is vested by statute in the Library Board of Trustees. The responsibility for the collection and maintenance of the Library is delegated to the Director, operating within a framework of policies and objectives as set by the Board. In turn, the director delegates areas of responsibility to other professional librarians in the collection development process.

J.   Gifts

The Library gratefully accepts gifts of books and historical materials but reserves the right to evaluate and dispose of such gifts following the same criteria applied to purchases. Material received as gifts may be included in the collection, offered in book sales or discarded. In general, the Library will not accept donations that require special handling or cannot be incorporated into the library collection.

The Library does not appraise donations.

K.  Local Authors

The Library supports local authors who have self-published their books and encourages them to submit copies for review using the same guidelines applied for gift materials. Some considerations include content, quality of editing and binding suitable for public library use.

The Library reserves the right to assign the location for self-published materials.

1st Reading 7/8/2014
2nd Reading and Adopted 9/9/2014 Amended and Approved 10/12/2022

L.   Appendix:

  1. American Library Association: Library Bill of Rights

The American Library Association affirms that all libraries are forums for information and ideas, and that the following basic policies should guide their services.

  1. Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation.
  2. Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.
  3. Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.
  4. Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas.
  5. A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.
  6. Libraries which make exhibit spaces and meeting rooms available to the public they serve should make such facilities available on an equitable basis, regardless of the beliefs or affiliations of individuals or groups requesting their use.

Adopted June 18, 1948; Amended February 2, 1961, June 27, 1967, and January 23, 1980 by the ALA Council; Adopted November 1980 by NJLA Executive Board.

2.  American Library Association: The Freedom to Read Statement

The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously under attack. Private groups and public authorities in various parts of the country are working to remove or limit access to reading materials, to censor content in schools, to label “controversial” views, to distribute lists of “objectionable” books or authors, and to purge libraries. These actions apparently arise from a view that our national tradition of free expression is no longer valid; that censorship and suppression are needed to counter threats to safety or national security, as well as to avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals. We, as individuals devoted to reading and as librarians and publishers responsible for disseminating ideas, wish to assert the public interest in the preservation of the freedom to read.

Most attempts at suppression rest on a denial of the fundamental premise of democracy: that the ordinary individual, by exercising critical judgment, will select the good and reject the bad. We trust Americans to recognize propaganda and misinformation, and to make their own decisions about what they read and believe. We do not believe they are prepared to sacrifice their heritage of a free press in order to be “protected” against what others think may be bad for them. We believe they still favor free enterprise in ideas and expression.

These efforts at suppression are related to a larger pattern of pressures being brought against education, the press, art and images, films, broadcast media, and the Internet. The problem is not only one of actual censorship. The shadow of fear cast by these pressures leads, we suspect, to an even larger voluntary curtailment of expression by those who seek to avoid controversy or unwelcome scrutiny by government officials.

Such pressure toward conformity is perhaps natural to a time of accelerated change. And yet suppression is never more dangerous than in such a time of social tension. Freedom has given the United States the elasticity to endure strain. Freedom keeps open the path of novel and creative solutions, and enables change to come by choice. Every silencing of a heresy, every enforcement of an orthodoxy, diminishes the toughness and resilience of our society and leaves it the less able to deal with controversy and difference.

Now as always in our history, reading is among our greatest freedoms. The freedom to read and write is almost the only means for making generally available ideas or manners of expression that can initially command only a small audience. The written word is the natural medium for the new idea and the untried voice from which come the original contributions to social growth. It is essential to the extended discussion that serious thought requires, and to the accumulation of knowledge and ideas into organized collections.

We believe that free communication is essential to the preservation of a free society and a creative culture. We believe that these pressures toward conformity present the danger of limiting the range and variety of inquiry and expression on which our democracy and our culture depend. We believe that every American community must jealously guard the freedom to publish and to circulate, in order to preserve its own freedom to read. We believe that publishers and librarians have a profound responsibility to give validity to that freedom to read by making it possible for the readers to choose freely from a variety of offerings.

The freedom to read is guaranteed by the Constitution. Those with faith in free people will stand firm on these constitutional guarantees of essential rights and will exercise the responsibilities that accompany these rights.

We therefore affirm these propositions:

  1. It is in the public interest for publishers and librarians to make available the widest diversity of views and expressions, including those that are unorthodox, unpopular, or considered dangerous by the majority.

Creative thought is by definition new, and what is new is different. The bearer of every new thought is a rebel until that idea is refined and tested. Totalitarian systems attempt to maintain themselves in power by the ruthless suppression of any concept that challenges the established orthodoxy. The power of a democratic system to adapt to change is vastly strengthened by the freedom of its citizens to choose widely from among conflicting opinions offered freely to them. To stifle every nonconformist idea at birth would mark the end of the democratic process. Furthermore, only through the constant activity of weighing and selecting can the democratic mind attain the strength demanded by times like these. We need to know not only what we believe but why we believe it.

  1. Publishers, librarians, and booksellers do not need to endorse every idea or presentation they make It would conflict with the public interest for them to establish their own political, moral, or aesthetic views as a standard for determining what should be published or circulated.

Publishers and librarians serve the educational process by helping to make available knowledge and ideas required for the growth of the mind and the increase of learning. They do not foster education by imposing as mentors the patterns of their own thought. The people should have the freedom to read and consider a broader range of ideas than those that may be held by any single librarian or publisher or government or church. It is wrong that what one can read should be confined to what another thinks proper.

  1. It is contrary to the public interest for publishers or librarians to bar access to writings on the basis of the personal history or political affiliations of the author.

No art or literature can flourish if it is to be measured by the political views or private lives of its creators. No society of free people can flourish that draws up lists of writers to whom it will not listen, whatever they may have to say.

  1. There is no place in our society for efforts to coerce the taste of others, to confine adults to the reading matter deemed suitable for adolescents, or to inhibit the efforts of writers to achieve artistic expression.

To some, much of modern expression is shocking. But is not much of life itself shocking? We cut off literature at the source if we prevent writers from dealing with the stuff of life. Parents and teachers have a responsibility to prepare the young to meet the diversity of experiences in life to which they will be exposed, as they have a responsibility to help them learn to think critically for themselves. These are affirmative responsibilities, not to be discharged simply by preventing them from reading works for which they are not yet prepared. In these matters values differ, and values

cannot be legislated; nor can machinery be devised that will suit the demands of one group without limiting the freedom of others.

  1. It is not in the public interest to force a reader to accept the prejudgment of a label characterizing any expression or its author as subversive or dangerous.

The ideal of labeling presupposes the existence of individuals or groups with wisdom to determine by authority what is good or bad for others. It presupposes that individuals must be directed in making up their minds about the ideas they examine. But Americans do not need others to do their thinking for them.

  1. It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians, as guardians of the people’s freedom to read, to contest encroachments upon that freedom by individuals or groups seeking to impose their own standards or tastes upon the community at large; and by the government whenever it seeks to reduce or deny public access to public information.

It is inevitable in the give and take of the democratic process that the political, the moral, or the aesthetic concepts of an individual or group will occasionally collide with those of another individual or group. In a free society individuals are free to determine for themselves what they wish to read, and each group is free to determine what it will recommend to its freely associated members. But no group has the right to take the law into its own hands, and to impose its own concept of politics or morality upon other members of a democratic society. Freedom is no freedom if it is accorded only to the accepted and the inoffensive.

Further, democratic societies are more safe, free, and creative when the free flow of public information is not restricted by governmental prerogative or self-censorship.

  1. It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians to give full meaning to the freedom to read by providing books that enrich the quality and diversity of thought and By the exercise of this affirmative responsibility, they can demonstrate that the answer to a “bad” book is a good one, the answer to a “bad” idea is a good one.

The freedom to read is of little consequence when the reader cannot obtain matter fit for that reader’s purpose. What is needed is not only the absence of restraint, but the positive provision of opportunity for the people to read the best that has been thought and said. Books are the major channel by which intellectual inheritance is handed down, and the principal means of its testing and growth. The defense of the freedom to read requires of all publishers and librarians the utmost of their faculties, and deserves of all Americans the fullest of their support.

We state these propositions neither lightly nor as easy generalizations. We here stake out a lofty claim for the value of the written word. We do so because we believe that it is possessed of enormous variety and usefulness, worthy of cherishing and keeping free. We realize that the application of these propositions may mean the dissemination of ideas and manners of expression that are repugnant to many persons. We do not state these propositions in the comfortable belief that what people read is unimportant. We believe rather that what people read is deeply important; that ideas can be dangerous; but that the suppression of ideas is fatal to a democratic society. Freedom itself is a dangerous way of life, but it is ours.

This statement was originally issued in May of 1953 by the Westchester Conference of the American Library Association and the American Book Publishers Council, which in 1970 consolidated with the American Educational Publishers Institute to become the Association of American Publishers.

Adopted June 25, 1953, by the ALA Council and the AAP Freedom to Read Committee; amended January 28, 1972; January 16, 1991; July 12, 2000; June 30, 2004.

A Joint Statement by:
American Library Association
Association of American Publishers

Subsequently endorsed by:
American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression The Association of American University Presses, Inc. The Children’s Book Council
Freedom to Read Foundation
National Association of College Stores National Coalition against Censorship National Council of Teachers of English

The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression

 

3.  American Library Association: Freedom to View Statement

 The FREEDOM TO VIEW, along with the freedom to speak, to hear, and to read, is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. In a free society, there is no place for censorship of any medium of expression. Therefore these principles are affirmed:

  1. To provide the broadest access to film, video, and other audiovisual materials because they are a means for the communication of ideas. Liberty of circulation is essential to insure the constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression.
  2. To protect the confidentiality of all individuals and institutions using film, video, and other audiovisual materials.
  3. To provide film, video, and other audiovisual materials which represent a diversity of views and expression. Selection of a work does not constitute or imply agreement with or approval of the
  4. To provide a diversity of viewpoints without the constraint of labeling or prejudging film, video, or other audiovisual materials on the basis of the moral, religious, or political beliefs of the producer or filmmaker or on the basis of controversial content.
  5. To contest vigorously, by all lawful means, every encroachment upon the public’s freedom to

This statement was originally drafted by the Freedom to View Committee of the American Film and Video Association (formerly the Educational Film Library Association) and was adopted by the AFVA Board of Directors in February 1979. This statement was updated and approved by the AFVA Board of Directors in 1989.

Endorsed January 10, 1990, by the ALA Council; Adopted by the Executive Board of the New Jersey Library Association on December 17, 1981.