Assignment+3

=Assignment # 3= Shannon Curtis = = =Collection Evaluation and Report=

According to Franklin and Stephens (2009), "library media specialists who constantly evaluate the collection, both formally and informally, survey students and teachers, and keep abreast of standards and curriculum, can build a collection that meets the needs of all users." I believe to do this properly, it needs to be done constantly and on an on-going basis. I believe it is going to take me three years to understand and develop my collection. My particular library has not had a formal or informal evaluation done in over ten years (this is according to long-term staff members and our long-term library technician). When the two schools amalgamated six years ago, they did weed out many resources but not near enough. Weeding has been done every year-end in June, but not in proportion to the amount of resources purchased. Bishop recommends a minimum of 10 books per elementary s chool student. When I started in my library in September we had 20,000 resources; that translates to 72 resources per student. I have already weeded close to 1000 resources. We are down to 19,221 records at this time; almost all of these have been graphic novels and teacher resources. I have physically perused these sections looking at the quality and quantity of the books. I have had to clean out a book room and a Science/Audio visual room to find the Science resources. To give an illustration of the mess I've been dealing with:
 * I've found:
 *  34 microscopes stored in three different locations
 * 4 large incubators (not one staff member uses them)
 * hundreds of grade 6 electricity textbooks (we are a K-5 school)
 * 10,000 or more test tubes
 * 1,000's of magnifying glasses
 * The reason I am sharing this is in order for me to physically look at my Grade Two Science collection, I have had to clean out and dig through ten years of mess. I have had to take all the Science resources from the three different locations and put them in one spot, I have thrown out loads of 'crap', got shelves built and now have been organizing all the Science Resources (K-5) in this Science room The teachers are thrilled and I constantly am hearing, 'I didn't know we had this. Can I use that now?'. So, as much as I'm supposed be focussed on just Grade Two, it is not a possibility for me.

My principal and staff come and see me several times a day for updates. My principal has already committed to putting aside money to start developing our Science resources. He wants me to sit in on our professional teacher evaluations as a resource person.

Moore states, "if students are to become problem solvers, decision-makers and lifelong learners in an information rich environment, they must be provided with resources that are relevant, reliable, accurate and up-to-date". One of the biggest problems in our library is that when you try to take a book off the shelf, all the books want to come with it and fall on the floor. We are indeed an overstuffed library. Furthermore, we are hardly 'up-to-date'. The average age of resources in the 'water' topic was 1993! That's 18 years old. Several resources were in the 1980's.

Accumulating information for this collection evaluation has been a huge task. A quarter of my library has been piled up with sealed boxes along with a full office space of about 12 ' x 6'. The boxes were piled up six feet high and you couldn't see the shelves, the cupboards are just this large, gaping space where big books and posters were in a pile. I have found at least ten large boxes of brand-new guided reading materials, 400 or more VHS tapes (nine copies of some titles), piles of dirty big books/tapes. None of this was accessible because you couldn't even walk in the area. I have not even tackled the children's book stacks. I have been working day and night and weekends just to see what we have. Running reports has been particularly frustrating because the reports don't match what's physically present in our library. I know I digress.

Summary of Report Findings
At this point, our library is not meeting the needs of the teachers, students or parents. As Joanne asked in her learning module, 'how is it meeting the needs of the users in the library?' It certainly is not. With the collection being in three different rooms and buried under boxes, it has been inaccessible. Upon asking the Grade Two teachers now after I have collected it into one spot and organized it by curriculum topics, they have said, "now we can see what we have, now we can see what we need." We have a lot of good resources. What I have done in order to physically evaluate the collection is I have compiled all of the Science resources into one room and have had shelves built. I have printed off the curriculum topics for each of the three science strands for each grade level. Then I am simply sorting the Science onto these shelves. Bishop discusses examining the collection directly and I have had no choice but to do it this way. This has shown me we have multiple copies of resources (when it says in L4U-our library program-that we have only one) and it has helped me to keep the ones in the best shape. "A physical examination of materials can reveal the size, scope, and depth of a collection" (Bishop, p. 145). This has been a very worthwhile method. This allowed the teachers, administration and I to have a quick look at teacher resources in these areas. Most of the resources were over 25 years old, some were old yet still brand new because of no use, some were dirty and damaged. I uncovered some fabulous resources that most staff members did not know we owned (yes, not cataloged).

Raw Data
<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">(please see separate //**pages**// for a few samples)

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">Collecting raw data was very time-consuming and frustrating. Our library moved over to L4U Freedom in September of 2010. Before that we were using L4U Enterprise for 7-8 years. Previous to L4U Enterprise it was Childs. My library tech has been working in my library for over 11 years. When Enterprise was introduced 8 years ago, they had to be upgraded 3 different times with lots of training sessions. Freedom is now a web-based version of Enterprise and the techs have had a lot of training on that and are still very frustrated. Freedom is still in the process of being written. They are currently using both systems and toggling back and forth. My tech contacted four other techs and the board office tech to help me to run reports. It has taken us two weeks and much of it is done by hand after the report was run. There doesn't seem to be much knowledge due to this new program. As well, the stats were all erased prior to September 2010 so my reports are only reflecting the last year really. I am thankful for this project in that it has helped me to become more fluent on our library program. I like the map I was able to generate but I'm still on the fence whether or not it was useful.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">The tech and I generated data using keywords on the old Enterprise system-this is the only system that will give us circulation statistics. We then had to print out the reports and plug in each resource separately to get dates and circulation stats. Very time consuming and I really felt there had to be an easier way. Five district experts could not find an easier way. I did not physically look at every book, but chose sections to peruse.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">Collection Mapping
<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">The School Library Media Specialist, according to http://eduscapes.com/sms/program/mapping.html. <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">must examine the quantity and quality of the library collection and determine it's strengths and weaknesses. Collection mapping is to serve as a quick picture of your collection. It is by conducting surveys, running reports and looking at the collection that helps media specialists develop their collection. "Teachers must have a voice in collection development...The collection must meet the demands of the curriculum" (eduscapes.com/sms/program/mapping.html). Teachers have had a huge voice in the 'weeding' and organizing of the resources that I have physically gathered into one spot. I did one formal survey at the beginning of the year regarding book/science rooms and only got three surveys back. Most teachers wanted to just talk to me. Therefore, I did not do a formal survey for this assignment for that reason. As well, I just literally got all the Science resources moved on Thursday, October 13th! However, I did informally talk to all of the Grade Two teachers and this was the general consensus: <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">The teachers in my school have not been in the habit of using the library for resources for their units. Most often they have borrowed from other teachers or purchased on their own. One of the teachers is going to help me to set up the 'materials and supplies' section of our new Science room so that when teachers need to organize an experiment they don't have to go shopping. The Grade Two teachers have come in to see the resources I have uncovered and are thrilled with what is available. My principal can't wait to get us together in Grade Groups to look at the resources and determine our collection's strengths and weaknesses. From this first look at Grade Two Science I can see several positive strengths:
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; line-height: 23px;">Pan Canadian Science Place resource for all three topics (these are brand new and many teachers didn't know we had them!). These are also a recommended resource from BC IRP document-see below.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; line-height: 23px;">Bill Nye Science DVD collection. Bishop (2007) agrees that these are an asset to a collection; they are durable, store lots of data and are easy to store. Furthermore, every classroom in our school has a projector, large screen and computer with a DVD drive. DVD's are an easy tool for every staff member to use. [[image:finalthird/DSCN3553.JPG width="320" height="240" align="right" caption="Pan Canadian Science Place"]]
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; line-height: 23px;">Lots of animal VHS titles and yes we still have TV's and VHS machines.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; line-height: 23px;">good quality charts on matter and animals
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">World Book, Canadian Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia of BC, Discovery Education, National Geographic Kids (on-line websites we subscribe to with ERAC)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">association with Hancock Wildlife Eagle Cam
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">association with Ocean Shaw Discovery Center
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">World and Owl magazines
 * [[image:finalthird/DSCN3561.JPG width="320" height="240" caption="Bill Nye DVD's"]]

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">Weaknesses
<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">Our collection's weaknesses are a number of things. Generally the collections are over 15 years old and the resources look dated and some of them smell or have water damage. We have very few resources in our Matter collection and are underrepresented in Earth and Space Science.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">The Animals Growth and Change strand of Science is tricky to evaluate. Each teacher has their own preference and with teachers constantly moving schools, we will need to just build a well-rounded collection of animals of potential interest. With our association with Hancock Wildlife Eagles and Ocean Discovery Science Center I am thinking that both these sections need to be expanded. We have 21 Eagle books (8 fiction and 13 non-fiction) with 25 circulations. Many of the older books are simply unappealing and need to be weeded out. The collection itself is 18 years old on average.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">The students like animal books but they are so jammed in that they cannot retrieve resources. Recently I made a display with our cat books, both fiction and non-fiction and more than 50% of these books circulated. The children love animal books and seem to gravitate towards the ones with vibrant, large photos.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">For the Cougars section (we have many local sightings every year), I ran a <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">report and took the books off the shelf. Out of the 12 resources in circulation, 5 were fiction, 1 chart, 5 non-fiction and one teacher resource. Interestingly enough only 2 items were circulated a total of four times in the last year. When I physically got the books, I couldn't find some of the books L4U Freedom said we had but I did find multiple copies of books that said we only had one. It was a rather inaccurate comparison. I have put these resources on display in the library and I'll see if they start to circulate. It is a rather nice, interesting collection (average age 1995).

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">One of the techniques I used in gathering data was checking a published list against my collection. Bishop states, "the more closely the purpose of the tool matches the purpose of the collection, the more beneficial the comparison will be." (p. 144). I used the BC IRP recommended resources list: http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/irp_resources/docs/scik7_lr.pdf <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">Go to pages 33-34. I believe this is an excellent list to compare to because the resources we do have that they have recommended are the ones the teachers and students are using and valuing. <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">Of the 31 recommended resources we have 8 catalogued but I know we have one more that I have seen. That translates to us having 25% of the recommended Science resources. I don't believe that is a high enough number. I found this process a very enlightening, worthwhile task. It only took less than a half an hour and it clearly illustrates our weaknesses in Grade Two Science. I printed these two pages off and wrote whether we had the resource or not by checking on L4U Freedom; I also physically checked the 'new' science room. I plan on showing this chart to my administrator to paint him a clear picture of our lack of resources.

**<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">Reflection & Recommendations for Further Action **
<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">I do not even pretend to have covered all of the resources that would benefit the teachers and students who are studying the Grade 2 curriculum. I could have analyzed all 500 plus animal books or the general science resources, NF 574.5, habitats, flowers-the possibilities are endless. I do feel the resources I have looked at and shown the teachers and students (I put many science books on display as bait books to try and increase their circulation) to be very enlightening to all of us. My next move is to collaboratively teach one of the Science topics with the teachers to really determine the needs of the collection and its users. We will specifically teach a topic and weed, assess and then purchase for the collection. I feel I am much closer to making an informed decision about collection development.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">So far, my preferred method of evaluation is a combination of examining the collection directly and then comparing it against a list of recommended titles. Bishop states, "generally two or more methods are used together to obtain meaningful results" (p.157). I love resources and I enjoy looking closely at what is available. When I interact with the resource I tend to remember it better. It is definitely more accurate than our L4U system (what I've seen of it so far). Comparing our collection to a published list gave me a focus and a future direction. It gave me a percentage of resources that we have a goal to work towards. Having a recommended list also gave me a tool to talk to staff about. I really only know the Grade Two curriculum well and have to rely on my teachers for their input into the other grades. Using the BC Recommended Resources List will give us a common ground to work towards.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">Running statistics can be useful to note the age of the collection and the number of books. It gives you a picture of whether your collection is under or over represented. It does not show the physical condition and quality of the resources though. However, I am definitely questioning how accurate our cataloging is at this point due to the many discrepancies I have found (books not cataloged, number of books inaccurate, can't locate resources). My next step is to generate reports that break down my collection into books, charts, VHS, DVD, teacher resource, non-fiction, fiction, etcetera. I just want to have an idea of where my resources are falling.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">For the remainder of this year and next year, the staff and I plan on focussing on the strengths and weaknesses of our Science collection. I believe I have to tackle our collection one small part at a time in order to develop a strong collection. I feel as if I have a plan that I can follow that will allow me to make informed decisions.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">References
====<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">British Columbia Ministry of Education. (2005). //Learning Resources Grade Collection-Science Grade 2.// Victoria: Ministry of Education, Province of British Columbia. ====

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">Bishop, K. (2007). The Collection Program in Schools: Concepts, Practices, and Information Sources. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">Franklin, P. & Stephens, C. G. (2009). Use standards to draw curriculum maps. //School Library Media Activities Monthly//, 25 (9), p. 44-45.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">Moore, J. (n.d.) //Guidelines for Collection Evaluation and Weeding//. Retrieved October 2, 1011.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">The School Library Media Specialist. eduscapes.com/sms/program/mapping.html