Sub-Collections in the Library: Organizational Issues

An interesting feature of this library is the presence of several loosely curated "sub-collections" within the collection, which apparently the previous librarian put together out of student interest. Unfortunately, it's hard to tell how these were chosen or based on what information, since there doesn't seem to be any evidence left lying around. I had to figure out what they were based on student questions and finding them in various shelves that didn't match the rest of the area, and am now pondering whether to move or change them as I go.

There are two general small collection types: series fiction, such as Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson & the Olympians series or the popular Magic Tree House books, and themed collections, such as "any books about Star Wars" or "any books for grades 2-4 about fairies".

These seem like neat ideas on their own! But my problem with them is that they're super inconsistent, which made figuring out what and where they were difficult for me to start with, and makes using them for their intended purpose - students being able to find their subject/series of interest easily - harder than it should be. For example, all comic strips are collected in such a sub-collection - except, inexplicably, for some Peanuts volumes that remain shelved with the hardback fiction, even though some other Peanuts books are in that sub-collection. Even messier are split series, such as J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, which sees its paperback editions separated as a sub-collection, but keeps its hardback editions in the normal fiction, so that students who go to one place or the other keep leaving because if the book they wanted was checked out, they have no idea we might have another copy.

Some of these collections are seeing pretty heavy use and definitely deserve to be displayed collected together for student ease; for example, the Star Wars section is frequented by kids from K through 4 all the time, and they would definitely have a harder time finding the many different authors and formats that contribute to that collection if they were dispersed throughout the library. But some of the series selected out definitely don't see any use, probably because they're older and have fallen out of interest in the meantime: the Mary-Kate and Ashley series, the late 80s/early 90s Gymnasts series, and so on. This suggests to me that the sub-collections haven't been updated in a long time, or that new materials that the library acquires are added to them where necessary, but old ones aren't actively curated or changed.

So: how to fix those, and when? Obviously the system could use some going over, not to mention clearer labeling and more advertising so kids can actually find the sub-collections they might be interested in. The principal has asked me to do an end-of-the-year inventory in the summer, so maybe at that point would be a good moment for assessment, especially since I'll be pulling usage stats anyway?

Updating an Outdated Media Collection (Or Trying To, Anyway)

When I signed on here, the principal of the school mentioned specifically that they would love some help with the school's video materials collection, which she said was "a little bit dated". Sounds good, says I! I'm actually taking Digital Collections this semester as well, and looking at ways of collecting digital or digitizable media is what I'm up to right now anyway. Plus, kids' movies are fun!

Well, here's what the video materials collection looks like:

As you can see, the vast majority of it is on VHS, with a few DVDs for flavor from the past couple of years. I pretty much expected that, but it was still a little deflating to start digging through. So many materials on depreciated technology, oh my!

After a quick inventory, it looks like the school does still have a good number of active VCRs that are shared between classrooms, although their numbers are dwindling as they slowly die and the school is understandably reluctant to replace such outdated pieces of technology. There are only a few DVD players to be had, though - usually very old ones, often combo DVD/VHS players from the era when that was a big thing - so those classrooms that do want to use DVDs have to jockey for them anyway.

This was such a big project that I went back to the principal, as site supervisor, to ask exactly what she actually wanted, because "can you update this" is a pretty vague directive. After talking to her, she explained that the school would like an inventory of the video media holdings, after which it would be helpful to have a list of suggestions for which materials could or should be updated to DVD first, as well as which ones would be cost-effective. She also asked for an additional list of materials that maybe could be replaced with something new and better instead of just updated to new media storage, although I think I may want to go at this one step at a time and leave that until later.

This project looks like it might be too large for me to effectively complete within the practicum time period, but I can at least get a plan in place for it that someone else could keep working on. My tentative outline-of-an-outline, for the moment, is:

• Perform an inventory of the current VHS and DVD holdings for the library (using the catalogue as a starting point, but I'll still probably have to go through by hand to make sure that's accurate).
• Identify core materials - for example, the library's collection of Disney films, or the historical religious stories series - that the library definitely needs to keep, with input from the faculty about which materials are used most for lesson plans.
• Identify outdated or offensive materials - for example, a collection on Native American peoples with offensive terminology on the box as well as in its content - that could be updated to newer versions or options.
• Research pricing for DVD or digital-only file upgrades to identified materials.
• Research replacement materials for outdated/damaged materials.

I'm not sure how far I'll get on all that, at least without taking extra days outside of work to dig into it, but it's a start!

The St. Leo Parish School Library: Getting Started

All right, so here I am at the St. Leo Parish school library, starting a weird adventure.

For necessary background: I'm not a school library specialist, and in my time at UNCG I've taken exactly zero school-oriented library courses. I'm not on the licensure track, and I have no school background (I've never been a teacher or instructor of any kind, and my undergrad degree is in music performance). It's a little weird, therefore, that I'm here as the sole librarian for an elementary- and middle-school library, but life's weird that way. The principal of the school happens to be the mother of a very close friend of my husband's and mine (very close - she was at our wedding!), and she contacted me during the summer to ask if I'd be interested in working at St. Leo's, since her previous librarian, who had been there for 20+ years, had announced that she would soon retire.

And, well, when you're about to graduate from a library program and a full-time salaried librarian position falls into your lap, you don't say NO to it, so here I am. It was a little late to suddenly throw myself into pedagogy or school licensure programs, so I'm winging it and hoping to put the place together on the fly. (Luckily, the school is a parochial Catholic school, so it does not require state school licensure and I'm able to acquire religious licensure from the Diocese of Charlotte instead. Of course, I'm not Catholic, either, so it's still kind of weird, but c'est la vie!)

The school library is small, underfunded, and full of very aged material - about as you would expect for a small private school that doesn't get a lot of funding. It's charming and the students love it, too, though. Here's a quick tour of the materials and sections of the tiny two-room facilities.

This is the school's small fiction collection, which sees by far the most use from the middle grades on up (4th on up through 8th). The shelf to the right with the green sign is paperback fiction, and the shelf to the left with the orange sign is hardback. The collection is mostly pretty old - classic novels (Dickens, Alcott, Stevenson) and older fiction series like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. The newer books are easy to spot because they're for the most part destroyed - things like the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series have only a few copies and are in pretty much constant circulation and demand.

Judging from the use of the upper shelves as display areas and the general age of the collection, it hasn't seen much expansion.

The childrens' section is the only part of the library to have its own room, which is also used as the storytelling/younger childrens' activity room. It's primarily picture books, with a small shelf of easy-reader introductory chapter books for kids making the transition into higher-grade materials, and very dated, with very few newer books and a giant slew of childrens' classics from the 1920s to 1960s making up most of its bulk. Some of these are good mainstays (Bemelmans' Madeline series, Dr. Seuss, etc.), while others are so old or incomprehensible to the kids that they don't even see them. Newer books in this part of the collection are primarily religious, including a large selection of picture books on Christian stories and Catholic schools.

Younger kids definitely like the toys that are related to their favorite books, but it's a challenge to keep them from going home with an opportunistic child now and then!

The nonfiction section is the largest potion of the library, and also sees the most traffic from younger-grade children (Kindergarten through 3rd), which probably says something about the childrens' section not meeting their needs as well as it should. It's heavy on biographies - almost a third of the nonfiction collection is devoted to them - and on the hard sciences, especially zoology and arts/crafts. It has a predictably pretty large portion dedicated to religious literature in the 200s, but is pretty light on most other areas, and unfortunately very dated in most of these portions. The history, geography, and social sciences volumes, in particular, are usually grounded somewhere in the 1980s or earlier, which is something of a concern for a school collection.

This teeny-tiny shelf section is the adult interest and professional section, which obviously isn't particularly extensive. It has a little bit of adult-oriented fiction - James Patterson and the like - and some professional manuals that are unfortunately old and might not be as useful for graduating students as one could wish. The Percy Jackson series here is really the only part of this sub-collection that sees much use, and I think it may only be over here because there wasn't enough room in the normal paperback fiction section.

The reference section is fairly large, but as you can see from the photos, it's not very up-to-date. The World Books there are three separate editions, with the newest from 2010 (although luckily the library does have a subscription to World Book Online to make up the difference!). Several Time-Life and National Geographic collections on historical events date to the 1970s, and unfortunately don't look like they've been updated recently or like anyone has really spent much time using them.

Dictionaries in a number of languages - mostly Spanish, French, Hebrew, and Chinese - are available, which is a nice touch (and likely because of the school's Catholic affiliation, which results in students from various different missionary countries).

This is the tiny periodicals section, which maintains about 13-15 active magazine subscriptions, including National Geographic (which you can see old editions of from back to the 1950s on top of shelves!) in both adult and kids' editions, Ranger Rick and Dig, and several religious publications, including U.S. Catholic and Catechist. Of all the sections in the library, the periodicals see the least use, which isn't surprising - they don't circulate and kids are usually only in the library during limited classtimes, and half the subscriptions are more for the faculty than for the students anyway.

Finally, the library does have a computer presence - a total of seventeen computers, ranging from 2002 for the oldest model to 2012 for the newest ones, most of them running Windows 7 but with several Windows XP holdouts. The library isn't meant to be the computer center for the school - there's a computer lab next door where the computer classes occur that has a larger and more up-to-date set of hardware - and doesn't have much budget devoted to it, and the computers are mostly used for educational java games or looking things up via the online World Book subscription.

Altogether, it's an aging collection that is trying to keep up for the students' sake with a very limited budget and not much real access for students. Under such constraints, it's not surprising that the library has always had a staff of only one - the librarian, now me! - and makes do with parent volunteers or student pages for any extra help it might need.

This is going to be a challenge, considering that there is literally no one else on-site to help out with the day-to-day running of the library; my practicum supervisor is Janice Safrit, head librarian at the nearby Our Lady of Mercy school library, so she'll be lending me her expertise and setting up meetings as necessary. Hopefully, she'll have a lot to share about the specifics of Catholic school library needs, and in the meantime, I'll have a lot to investigate on my own!