A collection evaluation within a school library is essential for accountability, transparency and to ensure that the library is serving the teaching and learning needs of the school. It must be carried out thoroughly, using various means, to ensure that the data obtained is useful to evaluate goals set and devise new goals.
Collection evaluation would ideally involve a combination of methods. Each method has its pitfalls, which is why a combination is necessary, so a balanced and accurate picture of the collection is ascertained. Usage data, for example is probably the method that most librarians and Teacher Librarians (TLs) are most familiar with. These statistics are very useful for determining the books and types of books that are circulated. This quantitative data, however, must be combined with qualitative data as there is definitely essential information missing from user statistics, such as whether the title the user has accessed was relevant or useful for their research or recreational purposes.
I cannot see how the Overlap Analysis would be useful in my context. Perhaps titles are duplicated but I am unaware of this issue. Perhaps in a larger or public library this would be a useful to ensure every dollar is spent wisely. In my context, surveys would be useful to gain a deeper understanding of where there are gaps in the collection. Definitely we would need to incentivise the engagement with the surveys to avoid skewing the data. Amongst the students, we have many library devotees, and unfortunately we also have book-avoiders as well (sigh), however these students’ input into the library’s collection is invaluable – how can we engage these students with the collection?
Benchmarking is an interesting method that I had never thought to do previously. I am always interested in going into other school’s libraries and checking out what they do and the state of their collection. It would be fantastic to team up with schools of similar size and budget to compare catalogues, websites and specialised collections.
I had also not previously thought to conduct focus groups before this reading, but think this is also a really worthwhile idea. The data garnered from Focus Groups would complement user data as it would give the TL the chance to dig deep into how the collection could evolve to better serve the teaching and learning needs of the school community. Participants would have the chance to offer their ideas and give feedback on the collection – both strengths and weaknesses. Focus groups do provide helpful qualitative data but must be part many methodologies of the collection assessment project as there are several pitfalls to this method on its own.
I had never previously heard about the balanced scorecard. I am not sure how our Head of Libraries would feel about determining performance measures on the collection – are these measures relevant and realistic, or simply arbitrary?
The current priority area for collection evaluation in my school is to ensure that we have enough print and e:resources to support the research requirements for assessment tasks. I have run a number of library classes from topics such as “Modern Israel” to “Renaissance” where the resources are looking tired and tatty. In the case for Modern Israel, the resources need a much-needed update. Certainly a variety of research methods must be employed to successfully evaluate the collection, set powerful future goals and create greater impact. The excellent thing about many of these assessment methods is that they would promote the existing collection, and the whole purpose of the evaluation is to augment usage of the collection whilst attaining the most relevant titles.
Reference:
Grigg, K. (2012). Assessment and evaluation of e-book collections. In R. Kaplan (Ed.), Building and managing e-book collections (pp. 127-137). American Library Association.