Acquisitions Accomplished

My school librarian was excited to see my acquisitions list when it was completed because she was planning to order some if not all of the materials that I recommended.  She couldn't believe the work that went into the list (it definitely was a little tedious at times - compiling all the information for each source) but she was very impressed with how thorough the research was for selecting materials.  Overall, I think that I chose 10 materials that will bring some "new life" to the 520 section in our library.  My goal was to make the information more updated which I think was accomplished.  Most of the materials I chose were current within the past few years.  I did choose a few older materials for the collection but they came VERY highly recommended as must-haves for school libraries.  I found an article, "What makes a good space book?" that helped me a great deal in choosing resources and also knowing what to look for in good materials on the topic.  I didn't realize that images were so important in this section but it definitely makes sense - especially for the Elementary age student.  The quality of the images was what I mainly looked for when I was able to examine my materials in person.  I even took a few materials off of my list after examining them and seeing that the image quality was not up to par.  Being able to track down the materials, although it was time consuming, was very helpful in determining if I wanted to add them to the collection.  I didn't feel like I was making such a "blind" decision after I was able to hold the book and flip through the pages. 

Acquisitions

This part of our service learning project has been the most fun and the most frustrating.  I love choosing materials for the library - researching, determining which ones are appropriate for our library, and examining the materials.  Finding materials that have 2 professional reviews has been the challenge.  It's strange how the research process works - some days I've had really great luck and will find a few different materials that meet the criteria I'm looking for and sometimes I come up completely empty-handed.  There was definitely a learning curve to the project - learning which selection tools I liked and which ones could lead me to more quality materials.  I've had good success so far using Kirkus reviews as a starting point - most of the time if Kirkus has given a material a positive review then I can also usually find one in Booklist, School Library Journal, or another periodical.  I also LOVE the way Kirkus recommends other materials to look at on the right hand side of it's website, based on what your current material is - I found one of my non-print resources this way.  So far I've found about half of my materials for the list and definitely understand what Dr. Moe was talking about when she said this was not a quick process.

Selection Materials

The selection tools portion of our project was very interesting.  The 2 sources that I examined - perma picks (print) and curled up with a good book (web) - I would not consider overly helpful.  There were some positives from both but also negatives.  With the web based site - a monthly “e-zine” - the reviews were very detailed and well written but the writer could be anyone - there’s no way to know the credentials of the reviewers because anyone can submit a review sample to the e-zine’s editors. The e-zine did seem unbiased - positive and negative reviews were accepted - which was a positive. The “Perma Picks” catalog was my print source that I got from the media coordinator here at the school that I work for.  She uses it alot which I can understand because the information inside is very well organized and up-to-date, and very concise.  Concise almost to the point of not giving enough information.  The catalog gives only annotations for each material but does have a section called “starred reviews” where it tells you if there are positive reviews available at certain reviewing agencies for that material.  I suppose this would be a good source if you had zero time to do research as a media coordinator and needed to make quick decisions on selections (assuming you trusted their organization and the way they organized their top picks.)  I think that I would have a really hard time using either of these sources to base selections on because of the lack of information.  Actually, after thinking about it more, I am going to have a hard time choosing materials that I can not examine personally...but I suppose with repeated good experience from certain sources, you can feel more comfortable with their recommendations and your own decision making.

MTAC

Something pretty cool happened today at school - from working with my school librarian I was asked to join the MTAC committee at my school.  I usually don't get asked to be on these "important" committees since I'm the art teacher and technically just a teacher assistant.  MTAC had its first meeting today and I was able to get a feel for what it is like.  MTAC is just getting started at our school -   the librarian and our school district's instructional technology specialist are really focused on it this year.  I was really shocked to see on the agenda for the meeting that we would be discussing developing a CDP for the school's library and that our librarian is forming a committee of teachers to make selections for developing the 500s section of nonfiction in the library.  I was listed as a resource on both of the agenda items.  I am excited that our librarian is putting so much trust in me and using the work that I'm doing to improve our library.  It is also really awesome to be able to get some "real world" experience with both of these things!

Deselection

I quickly became overwhelmed with the entire 500 section in our library.  It was in DESPERATE need of deselection work as most of the books in it were 10-15 years old, some (probably 25%) even older than 15 years.  I decided to focus in on the 520s - astronomy.  I chose this because it was particularly bad and out of date AND 3 out of the 6 grades use this section as part of their common core curriculum.  Overall, I really enjoyed this assignment.  The Lowe method definitely speaks to my OCD and logical nature because it is so straightforward and black/white.  The hardest part for me was that the section that I was working in was SO bad that the challenge was deciding what needed to be weeded out first and what could wait longer.  Ultimately, I chose the materials that presented wrong information first (Pluto as a planet) as opposed to the oldest dates.  It is a bit overwhelming that, as a librarian, you have to have a lot of detailed knowledge of many different things in order to know what materials are presenting wrong information vs. what materials can wait a little longer. 

Selecting for Deselection

Our next assignment is to do a deselection report for one section of non-fiction in our service library.  I'm choosing to do the 500s of non-fiction for a few reasons.  Improving science scores at our school is a huge focus of our school improvement plan and one specific strategy from the plan was to have teachers incorporate more science non-fiction text into their PBLs (Project Based Learning Units).  I felt like it was important for me to choose this section to weed since it was being used by all grades and very frequently throughout the school year.  It is definitely intimidating because of its size (32 pages on my shelf list print-out).  Another reason that I chose to do this section is because our librarian had pulled out a huge amount of books to consider for deselection from this section based solely on the fact that they were not partnered with an AR test.  She pulled these (almost a whole cart-full) at the end of last year but never had a chance to go through them.  I wanted to be able to look through them and see which ones were actually outdated, in bad condition, etc. before they were recommended for deselection from the library.  I didn't think that just because there was no AR test was a good enough reason for taking them out of the collection.

Collection Development Policy

Part 2 of our service learning project was to analyze our library's collection development policy document.  Wentworth's library didn't have one so, instead of analyzing, I got to create a rough draft of a policy for the library.  My librarian was ecstatic - she's only been at the school for a year and has been meaning to create the policy herself but hasn't had the time.  She wants to use mine as a starting point and is willing to let me help her finalize it and take it to the MTAC committee for approval - I'm excited for the learning opportunity.  It was a little intimidating starting the policy from scratch myself but, once I got started, I really got into it.  I think developing the outline spoke to my methodical and logical nature.  I also got to make connections between my community analysis and what I decided to include in the CDP.  I used the Evans textbook and the Brearley School policy example from class as inspiration for the format of my CDP.  I didn't want it to be too "wordy."  The other example that my group and I analyzed in class was REALLY long and a little self righteous.  I didn't want mine to come across that way.  I thought that being very straightforward and concise were important qualities to have in the document.