School library collections are an ever-growing organism; the collection must be consistently and continuously evaluated to cater to the teaching and learning needs of the school. New and relevant materials must be selected, while out-of-date and irrelevant materials must be deselected on an ongoing basis. Policies and procedures for developing the collection must be created and shared with stakeholders to ensure the collection is managed in a way that is well-thought-out and consistent between library staff.
With digital resources making up a substantial part of the library’s collection, policies and procedures must cater to these resources. The collection must also cater not only for students but also for teachers – providing resources on topics such as best practice and education research.
The collection management policy should be ratified by the senior leadership team, but in my context, it would be the TL or Head of Library (HoL) who creates the original document. To create the document the HoL must consult the curriculum and the particular needs of the school – in my current context a faith-based school that has a special collection devoted to Judaica. The Collection Development Policy (CDP) must be created with certain elements embedded within, including the mission of the school library, statements about library values including freedom of information and the collection goals.
The policy should outline that collection development involves collaboration with teachers so that all feel that they have agency and voice in the collection, and will therefore be more likely to interact and engage with the collection. In regards to the principles of intellectual freedom and freedom of information, the policy should outline the method for ensuring these library (and democratic) values are guaranteed within the collection management process.
The procedures should be included as an appendix so that all future staff, no matter their experience, will have a method to follow when selecting and deselecting materials. Providing a standards for processing and organising resources is a must, as I have definitely seen huge variation in the standards of workpersonship!
The procedures must include guidance on how to create balanced collection to ensure that into the future, whoever the HoL is, the collection will include culturally and linguistically diverse resources. There must also be clear guidelines for contested materials.
I really like the idea of using a rubric to evaluate the collection according to standardised measures. The rubric provided would need some work as it is already eight years old, however once engaging with a team of teachers and leaders to evaluate the collection according to the rubric, the results would provide the perfect point from which to identify areas that need strengthening. This can be built into the collection development plan.
The CDP must be revised every two years to ensure that it is a tool that best serves the school community. Also by recognising areas that are strong and recognising progress, the connections between staff and the library would be strengthened.
Oberg, D., & Schultz-Jones, B. (eds.). (2015). 4.3.1 Collection management policies and procedures. In IFLA School Library Guidelines, (2nd ed.), (pp. 33-34). IFLA.
Mitchell, P. (2018). How does your collection measure up?: Using the school collection rubric. Journal for the School Information Professional, Autumn 2018, Vol.22(2), pp.18-19,2.
Newsum, J. M. (2016). School collection development and resource management in digitally rich environments: An Initial Literature Review. School Libraries Worldwide, 22(1), 97–109.