Reality Check: Elementary School

I have started working on a collection development project for my elementary site.  I really enjoy collection development, but in the past any projects I completed were completely theoretical.  Now that a real school with real budgetary constraints and a real collection with real students are involved, things are a bit different.

In the past, my CD projects have focused on a specific curriculum unit--for example, in LIBR 264 (Materials for Tweens), I focused on The Age of Exploration.  While of course I was looking for current books, I was more concerned with content and availability than with the copyright date.  While many of the books shared similar DD numbers, that was not my primary focus--I was mainly looking at the standards being taught and finding resources to support those standards.

For this project, my supervisor had me take an entire section of Dewey (the 400s) and search for materials there.  When I started, I was at home without her guidance or the ability to ask questions, so I really just put everything on the "list" I created on Follett and figured I'd weed out what I didn't want later.  Her only parameters were format (Follettbound if possible, Hardcover if not) and the 400s.

I emailed her some questions about budget, number of items, etc., but I knew she had a full day of teaching and wouldn't have time to respond right away.  Between her response and our conversation the next day, I added the following limitations:

• copyright date of 2010 or later (with very few exceptions)
• professionally reviewed, and review can be accessed

The copyright date surprised me, because when you are doing collection development to support specific curriculum standards sometimes your only option is one that has been around for a while.  However, in this context--just updating the library's general collection--it makes sense only to invest in current titles (for nonfiction).  If I were specifically looking for a book on the history of the alphabet for a teacher, then maybe that rule could bend if the best resource was older.  My supervisor also shared a brochure by the CSDE outlining the acceptable average age for materials by Dewey range, and the date for 400s was 10 years.   This shifted my approach to this project and forced me to consider other factors, such as reports to administrators and parents, when selecting materials.

Of course it makes sense that you don't want to buy materials if you can't preview them or at least get a sense of what they are.  However, again when the focus is specific content, sometimes that rule gets bent.  For general collection updating, though, I can see why you'd want to stick to those titles with positive professional reviews.

The other thing that struck me about general collection development at the elementary level is the range of materials librarians must supply.  You can't purchase only one title on sign language, for example, because you need titles for emerging readers as well as for fluent ones.

She also gave me a sense of her budget for new materials and how she divides it (complicated by the fact that Escondido is half dual-immersion Spanish language, so she purchases books in Spanish as well).  That helped me get an idea of how many titles to include on my list.

In the end, I think I came up with a solid list of English titles.  I am still working on the Spanish list, which is really a challenge since I do not read Spanish and often, the books are not reviewed.

Another surprisingly valuable part of my fieldwork is lunch.  My supervisor makes a point to eat lunch in the staff room and talk with other teachers while she is there.  She often finds ways to advocate for the library casually during those conversations.  For example, when discussing what they did over the summer she told teachers how she and another librarian had spent time looking at the Broadband Safety Act and coming up with a plan to ensure that their district was in compliance.  This lead to a discussion of what Teacher Librarians are teaching, the fact that there are library content (model) standards, and how the role of the school librarian has changed over time.  At first I thought I might choose to work through lunches, but seeing how valuable these conversations with other staff members are has changed my mind.  If teachers in schools do not understand what school librarians do on campus, how can we expect to avoid being cut?

A challenge I see with this site is that the TLs teach scheduled classes on a weekly basis.  My supervisor's schedule is largely comprised of teaching time, with classes or sometimes 1 1/2 class coming to the library for a lesson and a brief check-out period.  Classroom teachers use that time as prep time.  This does not mesh at all with the view of collaboration and co-teaching promoted by Dr. Loetscher in LIBR 233 or 250.  However, I don't think the classroom teachers are going to give up their precious prep time to co-teach with the librarian.  From what I can tell, the TL tries to focus her lessons on topics currently being studied in the classroom.  For example, if, at the time she is teaching database searching, the 4th graders are studying California Missions, she would have them search for information regarding missions.  While this is not really what Dr. L has in mind, I'm not sure how the TL could accomplish a deeper level of collaboration while juggling a very full schedule of teaching.  I will have to think some more about how to break this isolation.  I think (hope?) it is a bigger issue in elementary schools when TLs are used for prep time than in secondary schools.