Assembling Selection Criteria and Writing a Collection Development Policy for a Variety of Older Medical Books

Abstract

Faced with a room full of older medical books, the Cleveland Clinic library staff needed to come up with guidelines to help free up space and decide what to do with the books. Without a written collection development policy, there were no selection criteria to help them decide the fate of these older medical books. A literature review was done to find the support for a unique set of criteria for the books. A run-through of the criteria was presented to the staff and a collection development policy incorporating the new criteria was written.

KEYWORDS:

• book appraisal
• book selection
• deselection
• library collection development
• medical libraries
• special collections