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In today’s climate of evidence-based practice, fiscal accountability and strategic planning, evaluation of the school library is crucial.  If we as teacher librarians are to ensure that our libraries are valued within the school context, we need to ensure our collections are meeting the needs of our users, even before they know what those needs are, building towards our visions of where our library will be.  Consistent collection assessment and evaluation helps us keep on track of our mission towards our vision, by showing us the changes that need to be made (Hernon, Dugan, & Matthews, 2014). Matthews (2014) upholds that evaluation methods fall within two broad categories: Library Centric or Customer Centric (p. 110).  These same two categories are reflected by Johnson (2014) in her use of the terms ‘Collection-based’ and ‘Use- and User-based’, however, she breaks them down further into ‘quantitative’ (counting/statistical) and ‘qualitative’ (opinion based) (p. 302).  Of the many methods of evaluation that fall under these two broad categories there are only a few that I feel are suitable and practical for the often understaffed school library team to conduct, that I myself would use.

Firstly quantitative evaluation of the collection through measuring the ‘Collection size and growth’, especially in our ‘genrified’ fiction collection is a practical and easy task to do.  In our senior library when we reclassified all fiction into specific genre areas, it was clearly noted that our humour section was lacking, despite the popularity of this genre to our year 7-8 male readers coming through from the junior library.  Using our ‘Circulation statistics’ shows us which genres and authors the boys enjoy and helps us find authors who write in a similar style to recommend to our readers of fiction.

Such quantitative analysis of our non-fiction collection, however does not work, as we have a process of placing lists suitable for assignment topics on trolleys that then are only available on a restricted loan.  This action, although ensuring accessibility to the wider cohort, skews any statistical analysis of our non-fiction circulation statistics.  It is for this reason that we use a ‘Collection mapping’ approach or a ‘Direct collection checking’ to ensure that the lists we create in our Oliver library management system meet the needs of the curriculum that the boys are studying.  Throughout the research process, we check in with the students to use their opinion, in what could be termed ‘Focus groups’, to see if the information provided within our collection is meeting their needs.  In our fiction collection we tend to ‘Survey’ our students looking for guidance in their recommendations.  We publish these results to use as promotions for reluctant readers as many surveys suggest that parent, teacher and peer recommendations are the way 6-17 year pick their books (Scholastic Australia, 2015).

References

Hernon, P., Dugan, R. E., & Matthews, J. R. (2014). Getting started with evaluation. Chicago: American Library Association. Retrieved from Proquest Ebook Central

Johnson, P. (2014). Collection analysis: Evaluation and assessment. In P. Johnson, Fudamentals of collection development and management (pp. 297-343). Chicago: American LibraryAssciation. Retrieved from Proquest Ebook Central

Matthews, J. R. (2014). Research-based planning for public libraries: Increasing relevance in the digital age. Santa-Barbara: Libraries Unlimted. Retrieved from Proquest Ebook Central

Scholastic Australia. (2015). What kids want in books. Retrieved from Australian kids & family reading report: http://www.scholastic.com.au/schools/ReadingLeaders/KFRR/whatkidswant.asp