VIII. Bibliographers - Function and Role

THE RONALD WILLIAMS LIBRARY

COLLECTION MANAGEMENT POLICY

VIII. Bibliographers - Function and Role

While members of the classroom faculty, administration, student body, and staff are strongly encouraged to make suggestions concerning additions to the collection, it is the Library faculty who serve as bibliographers and who are responsible for providing leadership in collection management and access to information. They draw upon their academic training and experience in their assigned subject specialties to build and maintain a well-rounded collection that meets the needs of the entire University community.

Primary responsibility for collection management of subject areas is assigned by the Library Administration to individual librarians on an annual basis. Library faculty serving as bibliographers make decisions concerning collecting materials and the ongoing maintenance of the collections in their assigned Library of Congress Classification areas. They monitor information in their subject areas from the Internet and select appropriate links to be added to the Library web pages. Because collections are developed over time and subject classifications change slowly, continuity in bibliographer's responsibilities is expected and any alterations to Collection Management Assignments wherever possible will coincide with the start of a fiscal year. A list of current Collection Management Assignments is available from the Collections Program Officer or from the Library's Home Page under Collections.

Bibliographers provide a second major function as the Library's chief liaisons with their assigned academic departments. They provide the ongoing communication necessary for the Library to support the curriculum of the University. In addition to building and maintaining a collection and providing access to information on the Internet, they can arrange for or provide other Library services to the University department. They are expected to establish a collaborative relationship with academic department chairpersons and designated liaisons for their assigned academic departments and to publicize the services of the Library to all the teaching faculty in the department. A list of current fund and departmental assignments is available from the Collections Program Officer or from the Library's Home Page under Collections.

Responsibilities of Bibliographers

Designated bibliographers for each fund are responsible for a number of activities for their assigned subject areas. These include:

• selecting all physical materials (monographs, periodicals, serials, and audio-visual materials) for acquisition;
• reviewing all materials requests by users of the Library and making selection decisions for appropriate materials to be acquired or to provide access to the information;
• managing and expending allocated funds for assigned disciplines;
• recommending materials for binding or repair;
• making decisions concerning withdrawal of library materials in the designated subjects including withdrawal of library materials following a weeding or barcoding project;
• identifying electronic resources and web sites on the Internet that provide information to support the NEIU curriculum, preparing brief annotations for useful resources when appropriate, requesting the links and annotations be added to library web pages;
• communicating regularly with academic faculty liaisons, publicizing library services to all faculty, and encouraging all faculty to maintain regular contact with the bibliographer;
• collaborating with academic faculty liaisons in order to build, maintain, and provide access to a balanced collection in the broad discipline;
• consulting with faculty and administrators concerning future academic directions, programmatic needs and course offerings in their assigned subject area, the impact such alterations will have upon the Library, and adjusting acquisition levels to support the new curriculum;
• consulting by appointment with faculty and students on complex information needs which require advanced subject expertise;
• providing bibliographic instruction for advanced level courses in their assigned disciplines;
• creating online user guides to specialized resources in assigned subject areas;
• attending and participating in meetings of the Collection Development Committee and serving on appropriate task forces of it;
• participating in the regular revision of the collection management policy;
• participating in the regular revision of the Approval plan profiling in their assigned disciplines;
• evaluating and assessing designated collection areas using standard bibliographic resources;
• keeping current on developments in assigned disciplines and reviewing current literature in their fields.
  

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