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Sudden Collections Coordinators: When You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

As new librarians enter the profession with varying levels of education and experience concerning library collection management, they may find themselves suddenly assigned the responsibility of coordinating collection activities within a subject area or for their entire library. From understanding terminology to working with acquisitions departments and from communicating with vendors to assessing resources, there is much to be learned in a short period of time. This paper will provide perspectives from five librarians at the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida (UF): the senior associate dean responsible for collections, the chair of the Acquisitions & Collections Services Department, an experienced collection coordinator, and two relatively new subject librarians who were recently asked to coordinate collection decisions for their respective areas (Humanities and Health Sciences). As one of the new collection coordinators came to subject librarianship from a specialized academic background and the other from a degree in library science, both newly promoted collection coordinators will present the unique difficulties faced in coming to collection coordination from their different educational backgrounds. This paper will address the large learning curve required when suddenly promoted to collection coordinator, including the steps of building a strong connection with acquisitions, developing vendor relations, and tracking collection development at the department level, while making suggestions for learning more along the way.