I will adapt the flowchart devised by Hughes-Hassell and Mancall (2005) to draft my own selection model within the context of the high school where I work as a Teacher Librarian. These features will be prioritised in the following order:
- The Library budget allocated by the school and specific resources that will be paid for with this budget
- Curriculum needs, learners’ characteristics
- Reading trends, student interests and characteristics
I will explain the above three priorities in the following section.
Priority 1
The Library receives a set budget each year. The amount is about the same each year and the library fund is quite tight and restricted. I need to be very selective of how I spend the budget. I need to use a combination of management methods of “the lump-sum budget” and “the line-item Budget” to manage the budget. The principal does not specify the allocation of budget to each category of collection, except for the requirement for a few online resources that must come out of the library budget. After considering priority 1, I need to consider priorities 2 and 3 as well to ensure the collection meets the need of the learning community and the school and the budget is used to achieve the best outcome.
Priority 2
Adapting the collection based on curriculum changes and development is most important to ensure the collection is up-to-date and will be used by the teachers. Quite a few subject areas including Maths, Science and English have undergone significant syllabus changes in 2018. The Library discarded 30 – 40% of the study guide collection. Therefore, the budget allocation for each type of collection was changed in an effort to give more budget for the replacement of the discarded study guides. On the other hand, the shift from the traditionally teacher-centred learning to student-centred inquiry-based learning required the library to provide collection and resources to support such initiative.
Tool 7, Matrix for Gathering Data about the curriculum recommended by Hughes-Hassell and Mancall (2005, p. 38) can be used as a collaboration working tool with the teachers. This tool will enable the TL to gain a more thorough understanding about the curriculum and identify the needs of teaching and learning.
Priority 3
Understanding the characteristics of students are important when making collection selection decisions. My school has 30% of EAL/D students and students of refugee background. The fiction and reader collection need to include a core collection of beginner level books to cater for these students and when they come in the library for their literacy and reading lessons. Table 4.2, Multiple Intelligences and Selection of Literacy Resources proposed by Hughes-Hassell and Mancall (2005, p. 39) provides guidance on the different learning styles and the direction for me as a TL to include different formats of resources when selecting collections. It is particularly important to stimulate EAL/D students’ reading interests by engaging them with collections suited to their learning styles.
The collection must reflect the current interests of the students and the reading trend. Course module 2.2 (FitzGerald, 2020) discussed the consideration for a balanced collection. The two considerations that are most relevant to my school library are “physical versus digital” and “quality versus popular choice”. Due to budget constraint, my school library has never had the budget to update the physical non-fiction collection. Nowadays students tend to use a lot of online resources for their study and assignments because these resources are up-to-date and can be accessed at any time. To meet the needs of study and student assignments, I have reached out to the public libraries and the State Library of NSW to help students and teachers to sign up for membership and use their databases. The library was never budgeted to subscribe to the databases. On the other hand, I have always managed to allocate a substantial part of the budget to the fiction collection, considering that it is our core physical collection which the students like to read.
Ensuring the collection is relevant and interesting to the students is the only way to attract students to use the library. Some school libraries have distinguished themselves in the digital space with ICT and no books because those school executives don’t believe in the necessity of having a library collection (CBC News, 2011). Therefore, providing students with what they want and in the format they like will ensure that the library remain relevant to the school and the learning community. However, this does not mean the quality of collection has to be compromised. In fact, a quality collection provides holistic support for its users.
To achieve a balanced collection, the strengths and weaknesses of the current collection need to be analysed. I can use qualitative techniques and quantitative methods noted by Hughes-Hassell and Mancall (2005) to analyse my collection. The yearly stocktake is a form of those methods that I have used in my school library in the past. Breaking down the collection further by using circulation-generated reports will be useful for analysing the collection.
References:
CBC News. (2011, November 15). Libraries to return to Windsor Catholic schools. CBC/Radio Canada. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/libraries-to-return-to-windsor-catholic-schools-1.1021028
FitzGerald, L. (2020). ETL503, Module 2: Selection in the school context [Course materials]. Interact 2. https://interact2.csu.edu.au
Hughes-Hassell, S. & Mancall, J. (2005). Collection management for youth: responding to the needs of learners. ALA Editions.