With one exception, the school libraries I’ve worked in have needed some serious collection pruning; MPOW is no different. Usually it’s the problem of having a lot of stack space and not enough time/staff to really weed what’s there. I’m of the firm belief, however, that pruning and judicious deletions are an absolute necessity!
Why? Well, if you’re researching a topic and go to a shelf that is completely packed with books, many of which are old, possibly out-of-date, and look as though they could fall apart as you’re reading them, you’re less likely (as a high school student) to use that resource. And finding those “gems” that actually will help you with your project can be a real challenge. My goal, as a school librarian, is to have students spend some time doing the finding but to be able to spend most of their project time reading, reflecting, synthesizing and then presenting a cogent argument. Often, because of the state of the collection, the finding takes more time than it should, compressing the reading/reflecting/synthesizing time.
There’s also the problem of old sections that were incredibly useful that are no longer. One school had a major project that asked students to imagine life as Jew during the Nazi era or as someone hiding the Jews. So the shelves were filled with memoirs and biographies that met that need. However, by the time I arrived, the project was long gone (over ten years) and the students were researching other things. We needed to choose the best of the books from the previous project, get rid of the rest and collect resources that would meet their current research needs. I’ve worked in schools that have changed the foreign language offerings, dropping German and Italian in favor of Chinese. Do we really need a lot of dictionaries in those languages, or do we need more Chinese-related materials? The sea change I’ve seen in how my English departments are approaching their work also affects our collection; none of the departments in my past four schools has asked students to use literary criticism or reviews – yet the shelves were filled with Twayne’s, Bloom’s and those Gale “[genre] Criticism” books. That’s an easy weed, particularly since they’re now available on-line should we need to add them back into the collection.
Our on-line resources also need to be reviewed. At each school I create a database spreadsheet, monitoring the ROI on our subscriptions (ROI = $ per search). The goal, for me, is under $5 per search. One database, requested by the department chair, was nearly $70/search. After two years, I was able to convince the department that it wasn’t fiscally prudent for us to continue subscribing. What that means is that we (the librarians) have to know what else is out there, looking for resources that will enhance our print collection – not, as some fear, replace it! – as well as meet the needs of students outside the library.
I’ve often said that there’s a middle ground between the school library with tens of thousands of books that never circulate and gather dust (so the school can brag about sheer number of volumes) and the school library that is purely digital (which can seriously limit student research using current, non e-available resources). My hope is that at MPOW we’ll successfully get there.
But that’s just for the non-fiction books, right? Well… no. We also need to look at the fiction. For the first time, I’m working in a school where the adults are just as engaged with the fiction collection as the students, perhaps more so! That’s great, and gives us a great incentive to ensure we’re buying adult titles (like the NBA and Carnegie longlists for literary fiction, or the Reading List for genre fiction). We also have to ensure we have great YA and MG fiction for our students. One problem I’m seeing right now is that while we’re a library serving grades 6-12, we’ve mostly collected for grades 9-12. Whoops! So this year, the focus will not only be on pruning, but also adding great books for our younger students.
Again, stay tuned for more on how it’s all going.
