Collection Development 101: A Year Later

About a year ago, I wrote a series of posts called Collection Development 101. The first one was about selection (complete with what is probably a record number of spreadsheet screen gabs for a storytime blog) and the other on weeding. I wrote a little about how I had decided to try and proportion my youth collection budget on the basis of circulation for each division. Then I divided my annual budget into monthly amounts for book orders. Now we've got just about one month left in our fiscal year (ours ends November 30th) and I'm back with an update post!

I suppose I should point out that this was an unusual year in that I took a 3-month leave in the middle of it, so the organized system of monthly orders fell apart when I came back to 4 months' worth of review journals to go through. So I blame any discrepancies on that. It's convenient I think. Please note that I dropped tracking the graphic novels category midway through the year and decided just to include them in the YA or J Fiction categories as appropriate.

Actual Numbers Ahead!

Here's what the number break down looked like last year:

Here's what I wound up purchasing in our 2011-2012 fiscal year:

I was incredibly close to what was budgeted in nonfiction as far as number of titles purchased (I predicted 135 and purchased 134). YA was fairly close as well; I purchased 38 more titles than anticipated. Fiction and Easies were off by about 100 titles each. 

A few thoughts

I keep buying fewer picture books than I can justify based off circ stats (remember picture books account for more then 40% of the circulation here!). It is really the only section where I have a huge space problem. We have over 5,000 picture books and that appears to be what we have room for. I'll be working on weeding them more aggressively next year. 

I also wonder if I should adjust the average book prices down. I've been basing them off retail price but not accounting for the fact that we don't pay retail, and are somewhere between wholesale and retail prices. My only concern with dropping each book cost a few dollars is that I don't want to overspend. So this is where I ask my audience: How do you account for discount prices when budgeting? Or when putting in your monthly order? Our vendor doesn't tell us how big the discount is on a certain book until we've received it and are billed, but I know other vendors disclose upfront. 

And SURPRISE! Here's what I had left in my budget as of 10/25/12: 

My budget was $16,000 for this fiscal year. Items received by 10/25 totaled $14,367.91. Items ordered but not received totaled $297.13, and the remainder was $1,335.96! I came in well under budget and get to go on the end of the fiscal year book binge at our local warehouse store! YES!