The Collection Development Policy provides an overall plan and specific guidelines for the development and management of the collections at MICA’s Decker Library. It seeks to make the best use of resources currently available and to clearly state the principles used for selecting and acquiring materials. Its purpose is to guide those with selection responsibilities, to provide an overview of tasks needed to maintain the collection, and to communicate the library policies to members of the MICA community.
The Collection Development Policy is reviewed regularly to ensure it remains current, effective, and appropriate to the library and the community it serves by all the subject librarians at Decker Library.
The Decker Library collection is developed primarily to provide for the educational needs of undergraduate and graduate students currently enrolled at the Maryland Institute College of Art. The collection also serves to provide support for the research and professional development of faculty and staff. The collection will also be developed with consideration for the interests of alumni and the community at large to the extent that such interests align with the needs of current students, faculty, and staff.
The library has established a liaison program whereby individual librarians work collaborativelywith faculty and students in academic departments to develop appropriate library collections andservices. In this capacity, each liaison librarian strives to maintain an awareness of departmentalprojects, programs, and initiatives that have implications for the library collection and services.The liaison also keeps the faculty aware of library services and materials of interest to thedepartment. Each liaison librarian communicates regularly with departmental faculty,forwarding new titles for their consideration for purchase and receiving requests for new titles.
The liaison librarians are responsible for the general balance and quality of the resources acquired. Librarians consider reviews in library publications, standard bibliographies, interlibrary loan requests, circulation data, and user requests in selecting circulating and reference materials for purchase. Every effort is made to accommodate faculty requests that are in the scope of the collection development policy. Users are encouraged to make recommendations for material purchases via the online form available at the library’s website.