Thanks Rajan, I would accept the amendment: "User Knows Best Most of the Time" (may be not always). Ok, that is fine for me. I am not a purist. After all, 24 cr gold is hardly useful. So with that small impurity, it implies that collection should be build according to the needs of the users. Librarian's attitude "this document COULD be useful" must be given priority over "this document SHOULD be useful". I also agree that User does not mean the current user, it also means the prospective user. For me, user means "Every Reader" as given by the "Every Reader His/Her Book" Law. Now the whole issue is that how this type of User-Friendly collection development can be implemented? It can not be done by "march-ending" or the "magic numbers" approach. It has to be systematic, unbiased, transparent and policy driven approach. In my opinion, Automated Library Softwares would be best tools to help in implementing collection development policies. These should have provision for detailed users' profiles and their library usage pattern. I would even like to have ratings for persons recommending various books and journals for the library. People recommending trash should be penalized. --Sukhdev Singh, NIC. On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 4:03 PM, Rajan <rajankila@hotmail.com> wrote:

Dear Mr Singh,

It is true that you should build the collection to the needs of the user and should not impose your value system to him.

The user knows the best, most of the time, but not always.

When you speak about the user, please don't think of the students or faculty now there in the academic rolls of the institution alone. Think of the tenure of a library book and all possible users which may run into a few generations.

So, in many cases you need to foresee creatively and arrive at a conclusion about the real needs of the users of the book rather than what the users speak when you decide to purchase.

That means, don't avoid inclusion of a book which you visualize to be of useful later and cannot be obtained then eventhough you dont have a user right now. As well, when you think of the user, you should think of the diverse kinds of users during the entire tenure of the book too.

Regards,

K Rajasekharan Librarian, Kerala Institute of Local Administration(KILA) Mulagunnathukavu, Thrissur

From: "Sukhdev Singh" <esukhdev@gmail.com>

So you cannot have Second Law violated and then expect Librarian to operate the Third Law.

So Build Your Collection to the Needs of your User. Don't impose your own Value - System on the User.

User Knows the Best.

--Sukhdev Singh, NIC.

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