Age of our collection

I spent the remainder of my funds last week. And in the process, I learned something about our collection. Portions of it are very old! I thought I'd check the ancient history section to see what was currently on the shelves in order to determine how many new volumes to purchase. The majority of books were as old as I (if not older). So, I get distracted and decided to do some weeding. One hundred books later, the ancient history section and the rest of the 900s (history and geography) looked much better and needless to say, I purchased 2 new sets of ancient history instead of the one I was originally planning on.

Weeding is something that many library media need to do, but don't always make it a priority (myself included). To ensure a dynamic, relevant, attractive collection adding new titles and weeding old no longer appropriate titles is necessary. Our collection age is currently 1992. The majority of our students are younger than the average age of our books. Do you think this helps to make books interesting or worthwhile? And my school is not alone. Collection ages for some of the other schools in the Keys range from 1989 to 1994. It's not surprising that students are turning to technology because they think that books are obsolete if this is what they see in their schools.

As for Coral Shores, our science and social science sections are in very good shape, so I'll be looking through the arts, literature, and reference for outdated materials. My goal is to get our collection age younger than many of the students, although it may take several years of weeding and ordering new books for that to happen. At least the students will see more current, attractive, and accurate books on the shelves!

Testing

It is FCAT time. I can hear groans from teachers and students all around me. Although I am not a fan of standardized testing, I can see the need for assessment. But there seems to be continual testing! And of course, the media center is closed whenever there are tests. I joke that when this school was built they forgot to add testing rooms.

It is a compliment that the media center is used the most for testing because it is the most comfortable and inviting room, and students prefer testing in here. I also realize that the administration doesn't have much of a choice. I get displaced or teacher's classes get displaced. (Hence the need for specific testing rooms!). There just seem to be so many days of testing that force us to shut down. Students and teachers are upset because they cannot use the resources. Sometimes I feel that people don't realize the media center is a classroom too, one for the entire school. And when it is closed, the entire school is affected.

So, let's stop testing our students so much, and start promoting wonderful research projects and reading instead. I believe that will be more important in the real world.