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Editor's Notes

• #4: One of the most important components of the project was official approval of the project from the Library Administration, even though we were developing an existing location/collection. Library administration was concerned with what I meant by a Toy Collection and just wanted to be sure what I was proposing would work. A definition was key and helped define the scope of the collection ¨C The Library of Congress defines a toy as ¡°An object(s) designed for imaginative play or one from which to derive amusement.¡± My thinking was to develop the collection with material mostly related to play therapy and manipulative types of material that can be used in counseling settings. My proposal also included the stakeholders for the collection and established its purpose, mainly to support coursework in counseling, special education, and social work. My thinking was develop the collection with material mostly related to play therapy and manipulative types of material that can be used in counseling settings.
• #5: The project mirrored two previous projects and elements that made them successful were utilized: Roving Exhibits led to Games, Toy, and Bibliotherapy projects: Roving exhibits are exhibits set up on campus showcasing library material related to the event and attendee interests, sometimes called pop-up exhibits.  Ensure the material is directly related to the needs of stakeholder populations in Social Work, Counseling, Special Education courses and student organizations. If I wanted faculty and students to come in, the collection has to closely reflect their interests and I had been doing that but it was one-sided, mostly what I thought they needed. Feedback from roving exhibits was taken and in most cases I¡¯d act on it and let the patron know. I think it gives them a stake in the collection and a sense of ownership by way of collection development.  Juvenile Collection of about 30,000 pieces yet many students and faculty either have no idea we have the collection or are not aware of the scope of material offered. Roving exhibits was a way to expose material in a collection many key stakeholders had no idea we even had or if they knew we had it they don¡¯t realize exactly what we had. Some patrons thought it was all for education majors or for someone taking a children¡¯s literature course. The key was to build on that understanding that yes it is that but also material of interest to those in the helping professions and even parents. As I met with faculty and students, it became apparent how little they knew we did already have and marketing and promotion would still be key in ensuring use of the material. Meet with stakeholder populations to help build the collections and continue developing them. In order to diversify target patrons beyond teacher education students I had to find material we could develop for those in the helping professions.  We already had professional level and juvenile bibliotherapy material but it was not easily accessible¡­more on how we fixed that in the presentation. So MOST Importantly: Make material easily accessible! I¡¯ve addressed this in various ways I¡¯ll go into, including guides and catalog record tracings.
• #6: As I did with the Games Collection, I again used the Student Organizations Council website to find student groups who might be interested in this collection. Two I found were the Association of School Psychology Students and the Organization of Student Social Workers. I contacted their group and asked for 5-10 minutes of their meeting time. I attended with flyers about the collection I had in mind and took any feedback they had at the moment. The flyer had the url to the guide which also includes a way to contact me by way of email, chat, and phone if they had more ideas later.
• #7: Promotion and Marketing will be done via social media sites. I found the student organizations, departments, and even some faculty on Twitter and/or Facebook and connected with them via my own Facebook and Twitter sites. Email for student organizations wouldn¡¯t work well as the make up of the organizations changes all the time, as do the faculty who teach relevant courses. All feedback was jotted down and I worked on orders for as much of the material as we could accommodate as we began to develop the collections.
• #8: These were the main vendors I used for the Toys Collections. We also ordered a few things off Amazon. Child Therapy Toys is a local retailer who offered bendable figures that were a request from play therapy classes and faculty. One interesting request but that I have been unable to fill was a request for a family of puppets showing same sex parents mixed race families.
• #9: These two sites are relatively new and certainly still being developed. In the Fall I hope to be able to increase Follows/Likes/Engagement. Currently, the Twitter site seems like it will be more useful but one of the student organizations and departments related to this project only has a Facebook site while others have a Twitter site. Whether or not I continue both sites has yet to be determined.
• #10: The piece that took the most work at the onset of the project was the guide. It culminates the material in the Games and Toy Collection as well as professional and juvenile level bibliotherapy material. I also have my contact information as well as relevant social media sites, including my own, with my twitter feed as well.
• #11: Since one of the common questions I got was ¡°how do I find this material¡±, and because we had no easy way to do this, I worked with our cataloging staff to work this out. They suggested the use of the Subject Heading ¡°Bibliotherapy for children¡± for professional and juvenile material. I was given access to our catalog client in order to get this subject heading assigned to material I was able to identify title-by-title. Since the subject heading does not limit to ¡°juvenile¡±, the catalog location is able to do that as well as a keyword search that includes ¡°juvenile collection¡±
• #12: Here¡¯s what a catalog search for juvenile level material, limited by Collection look like.
• #13: This slide is the full record for Always my Grandpa and shows the Subject Heading we used to tie this material together in the catalog.
• #14: Developing the material in the Juvenile Collection, I began with titles like those from the American Psychological Association¡¯s Magination Press and looked for book awards that recognized disabilities, like the Dolly Gray and Schneider Family awards. This is meant to specifically assist those in the special education program but can be useful to anybody in the helping professions or teachers. Clicking on the red @Txstate link will pull up a list of all titles recognized by each award listed on the guide, including availability and call number information.
• #15: Here is a list of titles in the Dolly Gray Children¡¯s Literature Award. Clicking on a title will open the full record.
• #17: In the Books tab I linked searches to books addressing various disabilities and included information about the two awards and did that for other tabs whenever a relevant award existed. It¡¯s helpful to patrons to tie this information together in various places in different guides as well as in the same guide. This tab is helpful for classes I¡¯ve had who ask for children¡¯s books by these subjects listed on the tab. As I get more questions on subjects not listed I add to the box, these are just some of the more common ones I get asked about.
• #18: As I began work on this project I thought someone had certainly already done something like this and some sort of bibliography or guide existed I could work off of but that didn¡¯t turn out to be the case. I had to do a lot of work researching publishers and vendors who provided the sort of material I was looking for so I began a list with links to their websites and social media sites for future reference as well as to help anyone else who might want to work on a similar project at their library. Some of the list came from faculty and students as we talked about how to develop the collections. The catalog records for Games and Toys also have an easy way to pull up material and links are in the guide.
• #19: In 2012 I developed our Games Collection to not only includes games patrons might expect, like those aimed at teachers, but also games that might be helpful to those in the helping professions. In meetings with faculty and students for this project, and on the bibliotherapy guide, I highlighted games like those in the image at the top of the slide.
• #20: On the top right, the picture shows the extent of our Toy Collection in January, about 5 total pieces. Our Toy Collection is currently at about 28 items, all based on faculty and student feedback. All material can be checked out and renewed just like a book although in the future we may have to restrict duplicates so that there is ample access to the material for coursework. My hope is that faculty do not check out the material and keep it indefinitely, although that¡¯s hard to avoid except by restricting checkout.