An orange and white cat investigates a stack of six books on grey carpeted stairs. The titles are On the Origin of Species (Charles Darwin), Botany of Desire (Michael Pollen), The Savage Garden (Peter D’Amato), The Caberet of Plants (Richard Mabey), Entangled LIfe (Merlin Sheldrake), The End of Nature (Bill McKibben).
This is a semester-long project for completed for the Acquisition of Information & Knowledge course; a requirement for my Master’s in Library & Information Science at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. Throughout the semester students were tasked with building a collection development policy for a fictional library or collection of their choosing. No other parameters were set on the library/collection or its contents and, while students were provided with key components, they were free to approach adding each component to their policies in any way they saw fit. Articles that looked at each component from a big picture mindset were provided but all detailed research was up to the students, as was all wording.
Based on a subject guide (bibliography) discovered at the Helen Crocker Russell Library of Horticulture at the San Francisco Botanical Garden, I invented the Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson Climate Change & Sustainable Agriculture Collection at a well-known New England University. While some figures, locations, and organizations may exist in real life, they are used in a purely fictional manor for this project*. The connections listed in this policy do not exist in reality. Statistics are also imagined however the research and writing was 100% real. I do hope a collection such as this does or can exist soon in the real world.
Explore the Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson Climate Change & Sustainable Agriculture Collection Development Policy
*Three interviews were conducted with real life librarians to inform the resource sharing portion of the policy. For privacy, the interview details have not been shared.
This project showcases my research and formal writing skills in addition to creative writing and problem solving abilities. Enjoy!