The Necessity of Collection Management
The third pivotal learning point I gained from the Masters program that will influence my career as a teacher librarian is the necessity of collection management. Without knowing it, I first touched on this topic during ETL501 where I found myself researching, selecting, and vetting resources to meet the curriculum needs of an educational pathfinder. The concept was more clearly defined and developed later during ETL503 Resources the Curriculum, and even further during ETL505 Bibliographic Standards. What became clear throughout these subjects was an understanding that collections must be developed to meet the specific curriculum and educational needs of the school it serves (Ondrack, 2004), a policy must be in place to ensure the collection is adhering to these needs (Kennedy, 2006), and collections must have the organisational framework to ensure the collection is made readily available to users (Hider, 2008, p. xi).
The modules and assessment tasks for ETL503 were very practical in nature developing my understanding of what it means to successfully resource a school library for the curriculum. In selecting and acquiring resources for the subject’s first assessment task, I realised the disconnect between the recommendations of an out-dated Integrated Resource Package (IRP) (British Columbia Ministry of Education, Skills, and Training, 1997) and the constructivist teaching philosophy focused on in the Ministry of Education’s current guiding principles and beliefs (Education Resource Acquisition Consortium, 2008).
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If a library is to be resourced for twenty-first century learning, it must include access to many types of resources (Kuhlthau, 2010), both digitally and physically, as well as resources to reflect the diverse learning styles and abilities of the students it serves (“e-resources: a taster of possibilities”, 2010).
As discussed in the blog post Reflecting on the Subject and Assignment 2 (MacDonald, 2013), selection criteria is a practical way to ensure potential resources meet the curriculum needs of the students and are of high standards for teaching. Furthermore, prior to the learning undertaken in this subject I had not considered the difficulties teacher librarians may face from other stakeholders such as teachers or parents based on the selection and deselection of resources in the library. For these reasons adhering to a selection criteria can ensure I have a documented reasoning for all the resources present in the collection.
The best practice for a teacher librarian is to place this selection and deselection criteria in a publically available library collection policy similar to the one created for ETL503’s second assessment task (see document on the right). I learnt that creating a policy that is unique to the school it serves benefits both myself as teacher librarian, the students, the teachers, and the larger school community. For myself as librarian, it allows me the chance to define the specific purpose and goals of the collection, how the library’s collection will be selected and weeded, and how the collection can be guarded against personal bias or outside censorship. For other stakeholders, the policy is used in a communicative role to promote transparency on the decisions made in the library’s collection (Kennedy, 2006, p.15), such as in the event of a resource challenge, or to defend selection and deselection decisions. I believe incorporating a school attitude such as Beilharz’s (2007) “we’re weeding. Isn’t this great!” (para. 16), along with official approval from administration (Kennedy, 2006, p. 27), is the best way for myself as teacher librarian to ensure the collection policy is respected and defended and that the collection can continue to do its job of serving school members and the curriculum.
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Finally, for all levels of collection management, and the library at large, to function, I have learnt the importance of resources having the organisational framework to make them readily available to users in their tasks of finding, identifying, selecting, obtaining, and navigating (IFLA, 1998) resources.
User tasks:
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Entity-Relationship Model for Bibliographic records:
ETL505 Bibliographic Standards introduced these organisational frameworks and offered a glimpse into the behind the scenes of library resource retrieval systems. Although metadata and labelling for school library OPAC systems and resources is performed and regulated by school district library administrators in Canada, learning how a resource is broken into its access points for the Resource Description and Access (RDA) standard, how subject headings are utilised to group resources, and how the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system creates unique call numbers was very informative to creating a mental concept of collection retrieval. As we continue to rely heavily on computer searches for resource retrieval, I can now fully appreciate that resources will not be found and therefore will not be used if the organisation framework behind them is not consistent and accurate (Hider, 2012, p.81).