Introduction

This chapter looks at collection development and asks the question: ‘are books any different from baked beans’ in terms of how library collections should be managed? Framework for the Future (DCMS, 2003) and Building Better Library Services (Audit Commission, 2002) both made books and reading their central priority, and so it is easy to imagine that when a librarian suggested that ‘books are no different than baked beans – our job is to ship them in and ship them out’, this caused something of a stir within the LIS profession. Collection development goes to the very heart of public libraries – it is their life blood, and many librarians were offended by the suggestion that books were no different from baked beans. Context, of course, is everything, and the context for this debate was the suggestion that librarians should not remove any books from their shelves, and that unwanted or unused books should be stored in warehouses, waiting for the day when somebody might want to borrow them. Not only was this an unrealistic suggestion but it struck at the heart of modern collection development – which holds that only those books that are needed and used by the community deserve their place on the library shelves. And they have to merit that place by being circulated on a regular basis – at least once every six months, for example.

The Strange Rise of Semi-literate England

In 1992 there was a lively debate in the Times Literary Supplement (TLS) and the Library Association Record on the views expressed in W. J. West's book The Strange Rise of Semi-Literate England (1991b).