iSchool Capstone

Holistic Collection Development for Philosophy

Project tags:

archives & special collections

information behavior & user research

Project poster

Our project was assisting the new Philosophy liaison by revising the Philosophy collection development policy. To aid our revision, we performed a collection assessment and a user needs survey. We discovered unused parts of the collection, especially among the foreign language materials. We also identified services our patron group strongly desired, such as the PhilPapers database. Based on this data, we rewrote the policy. Our policy will allow the Libraries to better manage this portion of their collection and thus serve their users efficiently and effectively. Our project may possibly serve as a template for future collection development projects at the UW Libraries.

Project participants:

Cara Barker

MLIS

Caitlan Maxwell

MLIS

Aimee Plaisance

MLIS