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By Ann Lehue, MSIS, Senior Manager, Collection Development
Collection out of whack? Need some balance?
We’ve all been there. Sometimes budgets get slashed for a while, or we lose a selector and can’t catch up, or a librarian leaves and we discover that they have only been buying their favorite authors or section, or books with a certain flower on the cover. Occasionally patrons do secret five-finger censoring of certain titles or subjects, or never return the book that everyone needs for that seventh-grade English class. Sometimes we take over a collection and simply want to know where to start. However we get there, from time-to-time, our collections get out of balance or are missing key titles or even sections.
Ingram’s Collection Development librarians have all worked in public libraries and have struggled with these issues first-hand. That’s why we are introducing iCurate Core: Essential Collection Gap Analysis for the public library. This service allows a library to rebalance their adult, teen, and/or children's collections with a one-time list suite of essential titles that they are currently missing – whether classics, evergreen standards, or new releases.
Adult Lists
Adult Fiction
Adult Graphic Novels
Adult Nonfiction 000s – 900s and Biographies (11 lists)
Children’s Lists
Board Books
Picture Books
Easy Nonfiction (Nonfiction in Picture Book format)
Easy Reader Fiction
Easy Reader Nonfiction
Juvenile Fiction
Juvenile Graphic Novels
Juvenile Nonfiction
Teen Lists
Teen Fiction
Teen Graphic Novels
Teen Nonfiction
We can match your holdings by author/title, so you generally will not see titles that you already have in your library in a different binding, such as hardcover versus paperback. Occasionally the metadata may not match between bindings, or the EAN in your catalog has been out of print long enough that it is no longer in our database. In those cases, we will not be able to match different bindings, and you may receive the title on your list.
These lists are intended to be purchased one time, every few years, or annually. They provide a starting place to show which essential and currently popular titles are missing so that you do not have to spend weeks or months analyzing the collection and searching for replacement titles to order. They could also be used annually after weeding to replace essential items that got pulled because of condition. Each set of lists (Adult, Teen, Children’s) costs $1,000… get all three for $2,800.
