Inside the race to launch an opening-day collectionBaseball. Horse racing. Movie premieres and art openings. 'Opening Day' conjures up such images. But to library staffs, opening day says 'show time,' and the opening- day collection (ODC) is its chorus line. A library's opening day means so much emotionally: new growth in a neighborhood, revitalization of a standing community's facility, a major remodeling, or perhaps a rebirth after natural disaster. For months, the public's attention will be drawn to the new building or remodel itself, but soon enough questions come up: What's going to be inside? Will there be new books and media? Where will all those new books come from? The funding for the ODC will vary, but, bottom line, the public needs to feel that their needs are being met. Empty shelves are a library's public relations nightmare. When Santa Monica Public Library (SMPL), CA, planned to stock a new 104,000 square feet main library with a healthy $151,500 ODC budget, we found out what meeting those needs for that big day meant.

A unique partnership

An ODC is just what it sounds like - a library collection that's ready on ribbon-cutting day. When the public streams in, all the books, DVDs, kits, and assorted library materials will be ordered, cataloged, processed, and shelved. With an ODC, the library staff will have worked with a vendor (or multiple vendors) to provide a once-in-a-lifetime collection that reflects the public's wants and needs. The same vendors will have processed the items (or 'units') off-site and stored them until delivery date, which is usually about a month before opening. This unique partnership makes it possible for a huge volume of material to descend on your library in one fell swoop. There is no typical ODC. Carlsbad PL, CA, took three years to complete its project, according to Susan Simpson, senior librarian for collection development. Joyce Albers, adult collections coordinator, who administers ODC selection for adult materials for Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL), has almost lost track of the types of branches for which she's selected. The city's 1998 library bond program has made it possible for over 30 branches to be either built, renovated, improved, or expanded. There have been new branches, remodeled branches, and branches closed owing to earthquake or fire. Albers has enhanced collections while in storage and built collections from scratch. Vendors will work with a library on whatever project the client might dream up. Whether the budget is small or enormous, an ODC arguably represents the best type of outsourcing in which a library can invest. There's no way a typical technical services staff can provide this service in a reasonable turnaround. Also - and this is no joke - there's rarely room to store the materials in preparation for opening day. Planning for an ODC, you'll learn more about your own organization. Outsourcing requires a close examination of the collection and how it's presented to the public. The result? Perhaps revised collection strengths, perhaps streamlined operations.

525,600 minutes is ideal

SMPL staff first met with a vendor in December 2004 to talk about its ODC services, a full year before opening its brand-new main in January 2006. A medium-sized public library serving a regional population that more than doubles the city proper's population of just under 100,000, SMPL was in the enviable position of being supported by the passage of two city bond votes (one passing by 81%). The city thus felt it could afford a generous enhancement of the central library's collection through its general fund. A formal presentation was made on January 24, 2005. At that point, the temporary main had been operating for close to two years, while the new building was being built. Approximately two-thirds of the main library's collection was in remote storage for this period. SMPL's ODC budget of $151,500 was comfortable for the size of this project, especially since the library's regular materials budget was running concurrently. The library system's acquisitions and cataloging functions proceeded normally throughout the year, with the ODC project working independently on the side. 'We recommend starting nine to 12 months prior to opening...to allow for the critical time to select a good-quality collection and establish specifications that can be tested and programmed,' says Brodart's Lori Gray. Baker & Taylor's (B&T) Jeff McDaniel likes 12 - 18 months 'because if construction is delayed, it has a ripple effect on our production.' Start too early, and the materials selection lists will not match the reality of publishing dates, stock availability, etc., and the vendor has to budget in storage time. Start too late and the vendor can't handle the volume either, plus everyone's rushing, and there's no flexibility or room for last-minute changes. Vendors generally agree that six months is the absolute minimum turnaround time.

Tick, tick, tick

Once we selected B&T, a series of critically important steps took place. Both the vendor and the library designated project managers for the ODC. Even before that, it's a good idea to have specific contacts on both ends. These are the folks who monitor time lines, pass on important information to team members, and keep the chatter down. Migell Acosta, SMPL's project manager, consulted with library staff members and completed the company's lengthy questionnaire that resulted in the library's profile. The vendor will need a copy of a library's collection development policy and any other documents characterizing your collection, as well as access to the library's catalog, holdings information, and cataloging practices. Vendors also want to know what formats you will consider: hardcover, spiralbound, books with CDs in the back, trade paper, and mass market. Be prepared to explain your library's style. All vendors work hard on their clients' profiles. B&T used a series of conference calls with the library's selectors to come up with a selection list grid, broken down by Dewey categories, fiction genres, special collections (travel and computer books in this instance) for adult materials, and equally discrete breakdowns for young adult, children's, and AV materials. The budget had been divided up roughly as follows:

• Adult print: $60,500
• Adult nonprint: $42,000
• YA print and nonprint (equally divided): $8000
• Juvenile print: $27,000
• Juvenile nonprint: $14,000

Everyone agrees it's essential to have plenty of best sellers, children's picture books, DVDs, and music CDs. SMPL's slant was fairly standard for a main library, with two-thirds going toward adult and one third to youth. The high emphasis placed on nonprint (audiobooks, DVDs, and music CDs) was important to this particular community. Carlsbad PL, which opened in 1999, used a formula more heavily weighted toward adult materials, because it needed to build an entire reference collection, about one-quarter of its total $400,000 ODC budget. Simpson says that if she were buying today, she'd greatly increase the nonprint portion. Solano County Library, CA, has devised formulas more heavily weighted for children (roughly 55% adult, 45% juvenile) both for a new branch in 2004 and for a second one currently under construction, as one would expect for branches located adjacent to schools and/or with heavy family usage. The ability to provide excellent adult reference service with online sources and databases greatly lessens the pressure to buy large quantities of print materials in that category.

Your library's personality

In the spring, SMPL's subject selectors huddled around the phone talking with the B&T team. Along with demographics and subject selection wishes, the vendor wants to have a more-detailed budget breakdown, by Dewey categories, genre, picture books, juvenile DVDs, and on and on. In B&T's case, the selection lists they send are usually about two to four times the library's budget, giving the selectors reasonable choices. Each vendor prides itself on its ability to tease out your library's personality. Which fiction titles fly off the shelves? What types of items do you never have enough of? What are your library's current demographics - and do you want to reach new users? Are the travel DVDs woefully out-of-date? Vendors listen to bits of trivia and attempt to weave the clues into the selection lists they'll send back. 'Even though these aren't official profile questions, we often ask things like, 'Have any movie or TV shows been set in your community? What is the most common form of transportation - Lexus? Subaru? Pick-up truck? Public transit?,' ' Brodart's Gray says. 'That really helps us get a good picture of the population to be served. We believe that good selectors can identify titles for any audience, as long as they understand who that audience is.' This conference call might be the most important 30 minutes of the whole process for selectors. Do not take it lightly. Selectors must articulate clearly their library's needs. For example, the 300s selector requested 'Identity politics; New Press and similar; progressive vein. Noam Chomsky, education, military uniforms.... Legal self-help other than Nolo Press.' The 600s selector noted 'Gardening - environmental, drought-conscious techniques - regional for CA/West coast.' The fiction selector asked for 'Literate, smart, contemporary fiction; include world authors especially from Pacific Rim where available. Bindings can include paperback where that is the only available.'

An explosion of activity

In June, almost halfway into the process, B&T representatives spent two days at the library going over the final details of the ODC contract and specifications, and especially, working out the cataloging and processing details. Acosta's team had to make sure specs were set up for cataloging and processing, billing and shipping, and various local practices. Pricing structures were established that followed standard practices: nonprint costs more to catalog and process than print (a typical print cost is roughly 20% the cost of the item), original cataloging costs significantly more. SMPL's basic print item had 12 processing features, from library stamp to item linking; nonprint averaged nine to ten features per item. The final contract and specifications should leave little to chance. The vendor's team usually creates a sample set, using the brands you specified, just to make sure they have it right. The pickier you get, the more it costs, so plan carefully. Children's materials can be a challenge. There really isn't a place to put an RFID tag on a board book. Local practices can eat up the budget - not to mention dumbfound the vendor - so some special collections might be better off done by the library's own staff. Art prints, computer software, international language materials, and music scores are examples. Change your mind and want to modify some processing feature later on? Not a smart, economical option since the vendor's storage facilities are usually far from where the contract work is completed.

Christmas in July

Within two weeks of those high-level meetings among project directors, the lists began to arrive in slow waves about a week apart. The staff had been given a schedule (800s the week of July 16, 300s the week of July 23, DVDs the third week of August, etc.) - which promptly fell by the wayside. The goal is to stay on task - the vendor and you. The basic rhythm seemed to be roughly two to three weeks per list. The beauty of an Excel spreadsheet is something to behold. Each selector could modify her or his list, shrinking some fields and resorting (alpha by author or in Dewey order are two examples). Current library holdings were indicated but not always accurately. With an enhancement collection such as SMPL's, the vendor's selection team is looking over the library's current holdings and then coming up with lists that fill in the gaps or build upon the established patterns. If the vendor had been providing selection lists for a brand-new library, it might have relied more heavily upon demographic information or buying patterns at an established branch. A veteran like Albers does a quick-pick method in the most familiar areas and then goes into laborious cross-checking against the catalog with the subject areas in which she feels less knowledgeable.

It's an art

And you were expecting the vendor to read your mind? We're back at collection development's crux issue: Is it art or science? Of course, you can order 'better' year in and year out: you know your collection and your clientele. Put this into perspective. The vendor has sent you a big list that only requires your check mark. If you don't like the list, the vendor will accept your handpicked selections and lists. This is a great time to pull out those wish lists and cross check. The fiction selector realized that B&T had no clue how important replacement copies were to her, since she hadn't mentioned it. Luckily, the vendor responded almost immediately with a supplemental classics list. Armed with her massive spreadsheet, she used Fiction Catalog, NoveList, and the popularity rating on EBSCO's Book Index with Reviews to help her stay on track with genre series and prolific authors. The children's team was thrilled with the nonfiction lists and picture books but found themselves adding and revising with fiction. Highly specialized collections, e.g., Farsi DVDs, might be better handled by the library's own selectors. The vendor's job is to bring balance to the collection as a whole. One might argue that a brand-new ODC is easier to order than an enhancement. It also depends on how much time a library staff puts into its collection development, and that usually translates into how much staff there is to handle the load. Ingram's Charlene Edmondson says, 'There is a direct relation to the tightening of library budgets and the increase in demand for more customized services.'

Place your bets!

With only three months left, it is time for the best sellers - titles that will be published just before or right around the opening. Thankfully, myriad prepublication lists - LJ's Prepub Alert, Booking Ahead, Tips, PW's online calendar, with their print-run information and familiar names - all work to make the guessing easier. SMPL was at a disadvantage with holiday timing, but it dodged having to deal with any mega-hits: no Harry Potter titles or election-year blockbusters. SMPL's own circulation statistics gave the selectors a snapshot of its own 'Top 50' authors, too. There is one twist. Thanks to all our nifty systems, clients start putting holds on titles sometimes three or more months before publication. Santa Monica opted to shadow (that is, make invisible to the public) its ODC until just before opening, thus not entangling hot new titles in the system's existing holds list. LAPL has a 'hands off' policy of roughly three weeks when a new branch opens. When it's all done, a vendor probably can't receive, process, and deliver a new title that came out within two weeks of opening day, but those boxes are going to keep getting delivered, wave after wave, all through the first frantic weeks of a new building's occupancy. Early December came and went quietly, along with the delivery date. The order was far from complete, but the bulk of the ODC gave the staff plenty with which to work. All month long, orders kept coming. By then, the entire staff was so involved with moving out of the temporary building that the excitement of ODC delivery was lost on many. SMPL staff members did the ODC unpacking and shelving, but this varies from ODC project to project. Having the vendor deliver, unpack, and shelve the ODC is the new service buzz. Albers, the ODC veteran, strongly recommends shelving the ODC first and then incorporating any existing collection.

The red carpet

Only in Santa Monica could January 7 be a balmy day, with temperatures in the low 70s. Celebrity author and local resident Jamie Lee Curtis waxed eloquently about the local history room collection and the thrill of finding her own titles in the library. The building, with its palm trees and paseos, welcomed a bustling stream of children, adults, and media cameras into its sunny interior. Yes, the striking facility and the superb programming activities brought delighted reactions from the day's visitors. But the well-crafted ODC was admired and gobbled up as well. The new media shelves - all those carefully selected DVDs and CDs - really captured the public's attention. One visitor commented that Blockbuster couldn't compare to the selection range available. While the new bookshelves might not have had piles of single titles, the breadth of choices was particularly attractive. Community and staff exuded pride in their new downtown square. Six years after Carlsbad PL's Dove library opened, Simpson still shudders when she describes that first weekend. Laughing, with hand gestures to match, she says, 'They were like, starving. Our new book section was packed to the gills on Saturday afternoon, and by Monday afternoon it was totally decimated. It was like a Hoover vacuum. They just sucked books off the shelves and went out the doors.' Meanwhile, over time, she says, regular users will be grateful for the work you put into developing a state-of-the-art auto repair selection - or cookbooks, self-help, or photography - but the circulation spikes will not be there initially. It's all a bit of show business, really. You will rejoice in your hard work and not stress because some materials are destined to be forever backordered. There are new users to sign up, new questions to be answered, and the satisfaction of knowing that your team - library and vendor - provided the very best service you could on that important opening day. C'mon now, curtain's rising - go out and break a leg.

---

Teresa (Terry) L. Jacobsen, formerly Reference Librarian/Fiction Evaluator, Santa Monica Public Library, CA, is now Supervising Librarian, Solano County Library, CA, where she is working on an ODC for the Fairfield Cordelia Library, scheduled to open this December