5.1 Collection evaluation
The resources provide a handy How-To article from the National Library of New Zealand Services to Schools (n.d.)- Assessing your school library collection, almost giving step-by-step suggestions when evaluating a collection, which is great for first time librarians and as a refresher. This sequence of events could be added to the Library Policy to ensure consistency and establish procedures when evaluating the collection.
In Forum 5.1, Methods of collection analysis, discuss which of these methods are suitable and practical in school libraries, and which ones you will use.
Working as a Librarian in a small school one and a half days a week, I can’t imagine how collection mapping could be achieved without support from the staff. Even working with pre-organised Scope & Sequence and Curriculum documents, it is a boat load of work for one person alone.
I still believe, however, that evaluating the collection is critical.
At my school, there have been several librarians in the past five years. Our non-fiction section has not had a stocktake for almost that long and our shelves are bursting with physical books on random topics that seem to have no order or theme.
In evaluating the collection, I would rely on both methods of assessment, but focus the initial inquiry on data supplied by:
Quantitative
Use and User-based
- Circulation statistics
- In-house use statistics
- E-resources use statistics
Collection-based
- Collection size and growth statistics
- Content overlap statistics
- Comparisons between different sections in the library
Qualitative
Use and User-based
- User opinions- to find topics of interest
Collection-based
- Collection mapping
A great visual resource when weeding! Original resource located here.
I think the above infographic and various resources suggested in the readings is a great place to start when developing a weeding policy. Everything put in place must be added to the ongoing library policy to ensure consistency in future years.
