blog number 4

I think that the first thing that you should do when making any collection development decisions, especially when you are talking about 20 thousand dollars is to look at your service community. The reference department should serve the needs of the community and should reflect how the users use your library. If you don't have the numbers to support buying online databases and you don't have any way to access how often your onsite resources are being used then it is just guess work or basing your purchases on what the staff prefers.
    If your community needs  databases like tutor.com or online tutoring then that is where I would spend  a larger share of my budget. If patrons use our computers to do most of their research then we would we actually spend more money on laptops or pcs in the library. Also we would need to communicate with our patrons and other members in our community such as schools and senior centers. We need to know if they expect our library to have certain resources in our collection. There are lots of good models to look at from ALA and other professional organizations that can give guidance in developing a reference collection. There are simply some things that a reference collection has to have because patrons have come to expect them. There is no reason to force patrons to rely on a reference system or use materials that they are not comfortable with.
Are print resource becoming outdated or obsolete? I am not sure whether that is our decision to make. Patrons deserve the best reference sources that we can provide and not just the cheapest and the quickest.
 We have a real mix of both print sources and we also have purchased some good databases. The challenge is for us to make it work for our patrons and to always listen to what they are saying. We do questionnaires and also take statistics to find out how are patrons are using the databases. We also communicate as a staff when we help patrons with their reference questions to see if there are any gaps in what we have. Also we try to monitor which database are being used and which ones are not. We have dropped database and have changed others just within the the past year. You can have the latest technology and the coolest databases, but if no one is using them or your staff isn't promoting them then you really have wasted your money. That means that the staff needs to know what resource you have and how to used them. You also need to have them on your Public Access site where they are visible and ready to use. I guess I don't think there is any magic formula that tells you that you should spend a certain percentage on print or electronic resources. If you meet the needs of your patrons then that is the guiding force behind how you spend your money