In my place of work, there is a centralized fund used to purchase teen materials for the branch libraries and those purchases are usually based on starred reviews in journals. Unfortunately, these starred books tend to be the types of materials that teens in my community are not interested in. Instead, they hunger for urban books, high-interest non-fiction, and manga. There are also requests for the best sellers that don’t necessarily get starred book reviews, such as James Patterson’s Maximum Ride series. And I also have some classic readers that are gearing up for college.

Thankfully, I have an infill budget that can be used to build the collection beyond starred booklists. Herein lies the challenge. With a modest amount of infill money, where should you start? Should the money go towards building a core collection? This can be especially pertinent if the collection is lacking core materials and balanced genres. Should it be spent on high-interest materials that will fly of the shelves? The missing college-bound classics that a handful of teens are requesting? Best sellers that aren’t stocked by the publication date because they weren’t starred in a review journal? Selection lists from the Young Adult Library Services Association? As a children’s/teen librarian with a modest budget, I must make the best of the allocated funds to provide teens with a balanced collection.

Here’s what I did to meet this challenge:

The first year I worked here, I purchased core materials for the collection. Authors such as Sharon Flake, Sharon Draper, Walter Dean Myers, and Jaqueline Woodson were missing, possibly because they were initially available but never returned. To get ideas for what makes a core collection in an urban library,I browsed book blogs on the internet, recommended reading lists on Amazon.com, and articles published by YALS and VOYA. I spent the remaining money on high-interest materials and manga. Teens in the library eagerly provided me with a list of manga series to order. And YALSA’s Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers is an excellent resource when buying high-interest materials for teens.

During year two, I have focused on acquiring urban books, which includes the Bluford High Series and the Kimani Tru Series. I’ve also run into a dilemma with the manga collection, in which most of the material acquired from year one is permanently missing. In other words, about 40% of the manga has been stolen. At this point I had to decide between purchasing new manga series that our animanga club has suggested, and reordering missing titles. I chose to acquire the new series and year three collection money may focus on missing titles.

At the end of the budget year, I plan to use YALSA’s Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults and Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers to get up to date with new high-interest materials. I usually poke around in the other YALSA selection lists too, including Great Graphic Novels for teens.

I think the key to building any collection is to have a game plan and teens should be involved in the process of developing the plan. I based the way I built the collection on the interests of teens in the community. I did surveys that asked about their favorites subjects and I also take notes from reader’s advisory interactions. That’s how I found out that urban books, high interest fic and non-fic, and manga are the materials most likely to be checked out.

With a modest budget, you can’t have the perfect teen collection. You can only build towards it. So you have to make decisions about what aspect must be focused on. I chose high-interest materials because I want the books to be read. But I balanced out that focus by purchasing core authors that teens from the inner-city would be required to read for book reports or just because their friends told them about it!

Resources

Core Collection
YALSA’s Outstanding Books for the College Bound

Urban books for Teens
Crazy Quilts Blog - 2007 list for teens of color
Crazy Quilts Blog - 2006 lists

Selection Lists
YALSA Selection List

Manga
TokyoPop
DelRay

Addendum: Readers, if you have any good resources you use for collection development, please share!