Collection Policy
Guiding Principles
Our collections advance Olin College's educational mission by providing students, faculty, and staff timely access to needed and supportive content and services. We employ a user-driven acquisition strategy that prioritizes accessibility and responsiveness to evolving academic needs.
User-Centered Strategy
To match Olin's agile curriculum, we use a 'just in time' acquisition strategy, purchasing materials when needed rather than building large collections 'just in case.' This approach relies on professional expertise, interlibrary loans, partnerships with other libraries, and direct response to user requests. We consider adding almost anything to our collection - from books to drawing tablets to binoculars - allowing us to serve our community's actual needs flexibly and efficiently.
Acquisitions
We support intellectual freedom and collect materials representing diverse scholarly perspectives to encourage critical thinking and informed discourse. For non-fiction materials, we prioritize those with demonstrated academic merit and educational value. For fiction, equipment, and other materials, we focus on educational, recreational, or practical value for our community. We collect within our budgetary, physical, and digital constraints. We do not collect materials that promote violence or hatred against individuals or groups.
We value and strongly encourage purchase requests from the Olin community (students, staff, and faculty). We purchase physical copies (and license digital versions whenever possible) of all required and recommended course books.
Weeding
Weeding is the process of removing irrelevant, outdated, superseded, or otherwise inappropriate collection materials. It is an important element of any library collection. We employ standard professional evaluation and weeding practices to assess our collection items, including date of purchase, rate of circulation, and curricular use. Library staff invite and encourage Olin faculty and staff to evaluate their expert areas in our holdings, and make recommendations for purchases and weeding at any time.
Weeded items in good condition are donated to Better World Books, a certified B corporation, or to local public libraries that accept donations. Items that are not acceptable to any organizations, such as damaged or outdated reference materials, are recycled.
(revised 9.2.2025)