High School Media Center
Collection
Evaluation
Scenario
I
have fairly recently become the Library Media Specialist in a high school. The school is located in a large urban area
and is part of a school system that includes seven high schools. There are two large public library systems
in the area, one run by the city and the other by the county, and both have
excellent print and electronic collections and speedy patron hold delivery to
the branch of choice. The student
population contains 40% minorities, 15% ESL students, and 35% of the students
qualify for the free lunch program.
My
media centers collection is 20,000 volumes and has not been fully evaluated
for a long time. However, an automation
system was installed five years ago, and system-produced circulation records
are available for that time period.
Thanks to past technology grants, the school has cable Internet access
and is equipped with Pentium 3 processors, peripherals, and standard MS Office
software, although it is likely that there are not enough workstations to
support Internet research and word processing activity, especially considering
many of the students may not have computers and/or Internet access at
home. There is an OPAC, but there are
currently only minimal links to tutorials, homework links, or research
pathways.
My
impression of the collection is that it is aging and unappealing. Past circulation statistics are not
impressive. In addition, curriculum has
recently changed in response to the implementation of state standardized tests,
so it is currently unclear to what extent the collection supports coursework.
An in-depth evaluation is clearly needed and I have asked for and received
special funds to accomplish it. The
project will take most of the year, but must be finished in time to support
budget requests in the spring.
Working Mission Statement
A
working mission statement has been approved and guides the planning and
implementation of the collection evaluation and the provision of services until
it is completed. It may or may not have
to be revised in response to new information gathered during the assessment.
The mission of the Meridian High School Media Center
is to responsibly use funds available, obtain additional grant funding, and
form cooperative relationships with other area libraries in order to provide a
high use collection with the appropriate mix of available and accessible
materials to support literature, literacy and curriculum goals as well as other
student needs. The Center will also
provide guidance and instruction for students and faculty in technological and
information skills.
Scope of the Collection Assessment
The
purpose of the collection evaluation is to use a mix of collection-based and
user-based assessment tools to gather data that will allow a definitive
description of the collection as it exists, provide a clear picture of the
needs of the institution and population served, determine the areas in which
the collection does or does not meet those needs, allow comparison to other collections,
and facilitate the formulation of a plan for future collection
development. Data will be gathered in
the following areas:
1)
Teacher
input concerning the level of instructional support and subject area
concentrations and/or titles needed for each course that they
teach. They will be asked to indicate
which needs can be filled by Internet and/or public library subscription
database access, or access to the public library print collections.
2)
Student
input about their access to computers, peripherals, software, and Internet
access outside of school, and their level of satisfaction with what is
currently available at school both in quality and quantity.
3)
Student
input regarding the mix of electronic information and print materials they
would like to have available to them in the media center for research,
literature support of curriculum, and recreational and other needs.
4)
Automation
system-generated statistics concerning volume count, circulation and the
average age of the collection by Dewey decimal classification and collection
prefixes. Data will be at the level of
100-110, etc.
5)
Hand
generated Percent of Relative Use (PRU) figures using the above information.
6)
Comparison
of technology available to that in area private schools.
7)
Comparison
of materials available and accessible in selected collection areas to
professional lists or award winning examples of what should be in a high school
collection.
8)
Visual
inspection of selected collection areas.
9)
Inventory
of the subscription databases and Internet links available to students and
faculty on the two public library websites in the area.
10) Inventory of electronic links and pathways
available on the media center website and a comparison of that list to the
homework helps on The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh website at http://www.carnegielibrary.org/kids/homework/subjectlinks.html
as a model.
Primary Uses of Data
Analysis
The data gathered in the assessment will
be analyzed and can be used in many ways, but the primary uses currently
planned are:
1)
Support
for budget requests.
2)
Support
for grant requests.
3)
A
baseline for forming cooperative relationships
4)
Support
for decisions concerning immediate and long range collection development.
For
example, in the area of collection development planning, many questions need to
be answered. The following are provided
to give an idea of the information needed.
It should not be considered a comprehensive list.
1)
To
what extent does the collection match current curriculum needs?
2)
Are
there fiction and biography titles available for cross-discipline social
studies support?
3)
Do
the students have access to the same quantity and quality of materials that are
available in other schools in the area?
4)
Does
the collection correspond to student use patterns and surveyed preferences?
5)
Are
students and faculty aware of the resources already available in the media
center and do they know how to use them?
6)
Do
we need more print, librarian-led, or linked tutorials and guides?
7)
Do
students or faculty heavily use certain resources that should be in the media
center collection?
8)
Are
the number of workstations available adequate to student need?
9)
Do
students need more technology and collection support outside of school hours?
10)Does the quantity and quality of topical Internet links and pathfinders on
the website need to be expanded?
11)Does the media center need to consider adding full
text and/or documents delivery supported subscription databases?
12)Does the collection support browsing, and should it?
13)Are there materials that support the needs of ESL
students?
14)Are there materials that support the full range of
reading levels represented in the student population?
15)Are there materials that support literacy and
reading practice especially in the area of self-selection?
Materials Needed
Evaluation
guides and lists to be purchased/gathered in advance if not already in the
collection:
1)
Beers,
Kylene and Lesesne, Teri S., eds., and the Committee on Senior High
booklist of the National Council of Teachers of English. (2001) Books for you: An annotated book list
for senior high school. Urbana, IL: The council, 2001.
2)
Coffey,
Rosemary K. and Howard, Elizabeth F. (1997) America as story: Historical
fiction for middle and secondary schools. Chicago: American Library
Association, 1997.
3)
Colvert,
Stephen J. ed. (1997) Best books for young adult readers grades 7-12. New
Providence, NJ: R. R. Bowker, 1997.
4)
Doll,
Carol A. and Barron, Pamela Petrick (2002) Managing and analyzing your collection:
A practical guide for small libraries and school media centers. Chicago,
American Library Association, 2002.
5)
Kachel,
Debra E. (1997) Collection assessment and management for school libraries.
Westport: CT: Greenwood Press, 1997.
6)
Yaakov,
Juliette (2002) Senior High School Library Catalog. New York: H. W. Wilson,
2002.
7)
Print
or Web lists of non-English language instruction, fiction, and biography
materials yet to be determined.
8)
A
list of electronic equipment and software available at Lakeside - the most
prestigious private school in the city.
Other
materials needed: sufficient computer paper and ink and/or toner to generate
course-need surveys for every class offered, technology and materials surveys
for all students, multiple copies of book and assessment checklists, and
various reports and spreadsheets.
Also
staples pencils, pens, and automation instructions for report generation.
Also
items for a volunteer thank you party.
Personnel needed
The
evaluation will be designed and managed by the Library Media Specialist. Volunteers will be solicited from parents
and other community populations including the University of Washington
Information School, with abilities and/or willingness in the following areas:
1)
Automation
system knowledge in the area of report generation.
2)
Data
entry
3)
Data
merging and spreadsheet generation
4)
Simple
data generation using a formula
5)
List
typing/merging
6)
Inventorying
databases and links, list creation
7)
Comparing
lists of materials to the online catalog
8)
Comparing
a list of equipment to equipment owned
9)
Physical
examination of selected collection areas
10)Grantwriting
It
is possible that particularly responsible students in this high school can be
used for some of the volunteer work.
When volunteers can not be scheduled for required tasks, clerical
workers will be hired with funds available for that purpose. Using the automation vendor to create
reports will be considered as an option if both volunteer and clerical staff
are unable to handle the work.
Preparation Steps That Apply to the Overall Process
Step
I
Order/gather materials needed.
Step
II Create
a table of the evaluation process that includes each task as described in this
document, the timetable for completion, and who will be assigned to do it. Use the table in Kachel, p. 47-48 as a
model. Present it to the administration
for approval.
Step
III Begin
to solicit volunteers for the process through school and community
communication pathways. Solicit a volunteer(s) to call, coordinate, and
schedule volunteers. Determine what the
automation vendor would charge for their participation on various tasks if
absolutely necessary. When it becomes
clear that certain tasks/timeslots are not going to be covered by volunteer
availability, willingness or expertise, hire clerical workers to accomplish
those tasks.
Step
IV - Although
a final report is included as a step in this process, it should be noted that
because it is a lengthy one, administration and faculty should be apprised of
its progress and interim findings.
Steps In the Needs Assessment Portion
Step
I Gather
from administrative offices the report which lists all classes offered, the
teacher and the number of students enrolled.
Step
II Ask
the administration for any additional reports available that will help the
Library Media Specialist understand the composition of the faculty and the
student body.
Step
III Compose
the course-based teacher surveys and have a volunteer produce them, create one
for each class offered and collate them by teacher offering the course. There
is an example in Kachel, but add a request for specific subject areas/titles
needed, and questions that assess acceptability of Internet, subscription
database, or outside collection access to fill the need. Ask for any information the teacher can
provide about student needs. Also ask
for a syllabus of the Course.
Step
III Ask
for time at a faculty meeting and outline the evaluation project, why it is
needed, and what teacher participation will be required. Pass out the surveys. Politely emphasize
that if the information is not provided, you will have no way of knowing what
their course-based needs are and when they occur in the school year. Let them know that if they are willing to
also analyze their subject areas in the current collection, you can always use
the help and suggestions. Let them know
you are open to discussion of the evaluation process and future media center development.
Step
IV
Compose student technological and satisfaction/use/preference surveys. There is a technology survey in Kachel. Expand it so that there are lists of
equipment/access/software so the students simply need to check what is
available to them, what they use, and what they would like to have available to
them. Compose a similar survey about
what they use or would like to use in the print collection especially in areas
outside coursework. Include instruction they would like to have available. Ask for specific subject area, genre or
title suggestions for self selected reading.
Ask for student volunteers to evaluate some of the ALA or genre lists of
young adult books that can be found at http://www.seemore.mi.org/booklists/
from a student point of view.
Step
V Have a
volunteer produce the surveys. Arrange
with the administration and faculty to have a day dedicated to the completion
of the surveys in homeroom. Have a
volunteer distribute them to homeroom teacher boxes on a designated day. Have the distribution and completion of the
surveys (and their purpose) announced in the school bulletin that is read in
home room that day. Include as part of
the task that a responsible student deliver the collected surveys to the
library during the homeroom period. Let
the students know in the text on the survey that if they have additional
information or titles to contribute at a later time they are encouraged to do
so, and additional survey forms are available for the purpose in the media
center. Have a volunteer dedicated to
collect and secure the surveys as they arrive at the media center that day.
Step
VI The
library media specialist will examine the teacher survey forms, extracting
collection and instruction support needed including the timing. This data will be merged with the
course/enrollment/teacher report by a volunteer or hired clerical worker.
Step
VII Volunteers
will tabulate the results of the student surveys and create a single report
including numbers of students answering in all given ways for a particular
question, and the proportion of the student body that that represents.
Steps in the Collection Examination Portion
Step
I Have a
volunteer, clerical worker, or the vendor pull reports that the automation
system offers. Those needed are:
1
The
collection totals and circulation by Dewey classification (in ranges of 10) and
other collection prefixes and formats.
2
The
average age of the collection in each Dewey classification. Kachel states that a median age is more
useful, but that must be manually generated, so this evaluation will use the
easily generated, and nearly as useful average age instead.
3
A
circulation report by patron type, and if available, by grade level.
Step
II Have a
volunteer or hired clerical worker manually figure the Percent of Relative use
(PRU) for each Dewey classification and collection designation by using the
figures from reports generated in Step I.
The formula is:
(% of circulation /% of collection) X 100 = PRU
Step
III Have
a volunteer or clerical worker merge the figures generated in Step I, the PRU
figures, and the course needs extracted in Step VI of the Needs Assessment
portion into one document.
Step
IV - Have a
volunteer compare the list of electronic equipment and software available at
Lakeside School to that available in the media center.
Step
V - Have a
volunteer or hired worker familiar with the grant writing process begin grant
applications for a state Libraray and Information Technolgy Services grant and
a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Step
VI -
Library Media Specialist decides which lists from the purhased/gathered
bibliographies will be matched to the available (as opposed to accessible)
collection. Without having examined
Yaakov, the currently proposed plan is to most heavily use lists from Calvert
and Coffey, supplemented with the excellent biography and auto-biography lists
from Beers. The Library Media
Specialist's priorities are the fiction and biography collections, and the
research, Internet, and writing instruction collections, but those subject
sections which teachers indicate need a high level of support including
immediate access will also be included.
(These will have been identified in Step IV of the needs assessment
porttion.)
Step
VII - Have
a volunteer pull the American Library Association Young Adult lists from the
YALSA site at http://www.ala.org/yalsa/booklists and merge them into one
alphabetical list.
Step
VIII - Have
a volunteer generate copies of the lists generated in Steps VI and VII. Assign volunteers to individual lists or
portions of lists. Have them check availability of each title in the online
media center catalog, noting multiple copies if available. For each list have the the checker generate
the percentage of items available in the collection, and have all these figures
checked by someone competent with figures.
# items available/ # items on the list X 100 = % available in the
collection
Step
IX - Have a
volunteer or hired worker make a single list by Dewey classification and other
collection prefix noting % available by each list checked. Note that in non-fiction subject areas, only
those areas identified as high priority by teachers will be checked in this
evaluation process. Others will be
noted: "Lower curriculum priority.
To be checked in later evalutations."
Step
X - Have a
volunteer or hired worker add the information in the report generated in Step
IX to the one generated in Step III.
Step
XI - Have a
volunteer create an inventory of all subscription databases and all tutorials
available on the two local public library system websites. If anything is currently available on the
school media center website, draw a comparison.
Step
XII - Have
a volunteer(s) create an inventory of homework links and pathways available on
the two local library sites and on the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh website
including URLs. Crosscheck the
inventory to anything currently available on the media center website.
Step
XIII -
Library Media Specialist create a checklist for visual inspection of selected
collection area using the one in Kachel as a model. The primary purpose is to determine the age and condition of
volumes by area. If at all possible,
the Library Media Specialist should do some of the actual inspection work
herself, perhaps concentrating on the non-fiction areas identified as high
priority. Volunteers or hired workers
can be used for other sections as needed.
Merge this data into the single report produced in Step X.
Step XIV - Have a thank you party for workers and
volunteers used in the evaluation process.
Step
XV - Library
Media Specialist examine the figures and inventory and condition checklists produced in this evaluation and creates
a report for administration and faculty.
Step
XVI -
Library Media Specialist generate a detailed Collection Development Plan and
present to administration and faculty.
Step
XVII - Prepare
budget requests based on findings.
Step
XVIII- Have
volunteer or hired grant writer begin writing funding grants to improve
collection based on findings.
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Note
to Instructor: The formulation of an evaluation plan would
necessarily be based on the ideas and philosophy of the Library Media
Specialist. Since I am not in the
field, and do not plan to be, I had to do considerable thinking about the
positions I would have about such a collection. I found that I had some strong opinions, and I include them in a
statement below in order to acknowledge the bias in the structure of the
evaluation. Besides the goal of
gathering information, I would actually be attempting to substantiate my own
thoughts on future collection development, although hopefully, I would adjust
them in the face of data which clearly refuted them.
Thoughts on Library Media Center Collection Development
I
have yet to experience a school library collection that actually adequately
supported curriculum and student research. The non-fiction particularly is
usually dated and unappealing. The
media center should obviously support teachers by providing materials that they
need in their actual lesson presentations. However, when one goes beyond that,
to try to collect all materials to support student inquiry pathways modulated
by the content of their lessons and assignments, collection development becomes
an exercise in futiltiy. Part of the problem has always been low budgets and
constantly changing curriculums. Since the information technology explosion,
budgets must also be stretched to include access and constantly evolving
technologies. Students have developed a
preference for finding their information online. Many despair at this
development, but I actually think it provides a tremendous opportunity for
school library media collections to proportion their collections more toward
the accessible as opposed to the available, and more with a "just in
time" philosophy as opposed to a "just in case" philosophy. Rather than resist the students
inclinations to find their information online, the media centers should instead
focus on providing them with the research instruction and evaluation techniques
they need to be proficient.
Therefore
my philosophy on entering a library media center would be twofold. One focus
would be on developing a strong accessible research collection, and the other
would be on providing an available collection to support literature and
literacy goals. In the area of direct curriculum support, I would expect that I
could offer the greatest impact by concentrating on access issues and website
content. I would be focused on making
sure that the equipment and software available was strong in quality and
adequate in quantity. Comparisons to
other better equipped schools would be helpful in underlining the need and
supporting budget and grant proposals.
A stronger website could be developed in the short run by linking to the
catalogs and subscription databases of the two local public library systems,
and to the homework link pages there and at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburg
as well. Appropriate tutorials on those
three sites and on others would also be linked. Eventually the goal would be to have all appropriate links be
organized by subject and course, and mediated by the media center's online
interface itself. Students should be
directed to and instructed in the use of the public library databases that
would be most helpful to them in their work, or for their personal needs. Consideration should be given to subscribing
to databases that offered information, organization, or services not available
through the public library if the budget allows. If this is done, the services should no doubt include full text
or coordinated document delivery.
Support should be given to efforts to develop statewide consortia for
the purpose of providing or facilitating affordable purchase of them. I would
also want to develop strong in-library instruction and print guides as well.
My
inclination would be to support instructors' desires to have their students use
print resources by utilizing the extremely strong collections in the locale
public library systems. As such, I
would make sure that each and every student had a library card in each
system. (These would allow them to use
the subscription databases there as well.)
I would also explore the possibility of being included as a destination
and circulation point for at least one of the public systems. If that proved
impossible, I would utilize ILL for those students who found it difficult to
access one of the public branches for any variety of reasons. This access focus for the collection would
need the support of the faculty. They
would have to agree to allow time for the hold process in their lesson
plans.
The
second focus would be to expand the available collections. Areas of Internet, research, and writing
instruction would be a priority, as would a collection of historical fiction
and biography to support cross-discipline connections of curriculum
content. Faculty would no doubt support
these efforts. However, I would also
like to expand fiction collections and subject areas suggested by the student
surveys with more general literacy goals in mind. This in fact seems to be a departure from current standard
library media practice that seem to leave the bulk of recreational reading
collections to the public systems. I
think this is a mistake. Students
should certainly be made aware of the public collections and encouraged to use
them, but I feel that the school media center should also make student-centered
collections available in an attempt to reach students whose family culture may
not include visits to the public library or who need encouragement to develop
reading habits and skills. We do not know
that the students will be in the public library, but we do know they are
at school. High interest materials at all reading levels should be provided and
attention given to the needs of ESL students as well. If the budget can be stretched to include foreign language
materials, that part of the collection might provide something useful to offer
to public library collections in exchange for their support in cooperative
programs. Paperback format would be the
emphasis, since students seem to prefer it.
Also, collections of books on tape or CD might support students with
special needs and provide a means of bridging students into reading.
A
major purpose of the collection evaluation would be to provide data to support
or refute the points within the above philosophy. Evidence would be used to adjust goals and objectives, and would
be presented to the community and fundraising sources. I ame aware that to really implement
everything I wanted to do, I would need funding beyond that provided by the
administration, and to forward that, I have made grant writing a part of this
project. I chose to interpret the
assignnmet specification that I had funds available very liberally.