A No-Budget, In-House, Staff-Led Professional Development Model

Abstract

From September 2015 through January 2016, the staff of the Gelman Library Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) at The George Washington University (GW) participated in a staff-designed and -led professional development discussion series. The group met four times and included both SCRC staff who had collection development responsibilities and those who had none. In addition, several librarians from outside of the SCRC joined the group. Participants read and discussed seminal articles about collection development, reviewed aspects of current collection development activities, and drafted a collection development policy template that is now used by all SCRC curatorial staff. Responses to a survey following the series as well as participants’ informal comments indicated that the series met its stated goals. As of June 2016, the majority of the SCRC collecting areas had posted new collection development policies online using the template drafted by series participants. Furthermore, this series captured and focused the existing collaborative and collegial atmosphere in the GW libraries system and led to other partnerships and innovations.