bannercone

As audio, video, and other technologies become a larger part of the collection, evaluation becomes more important. Revisions may need to be made in the collection development policy, selection practices, or center management to reflect changing needs. For example, at what point will a majority of your patrons have DVD players rather than VCRs? Or, what types of materials will support changing state standards?

reportHow grade would you give your center? Collection evaluation can be focused on the collection or the clients. Explore the following three areas:

Collection Mapping

Collection mapping helps librarians review the strengths and weaknesses of the entire collection through a graphical representation. Used mainly in school libraries for print collection, maps can also be made of specific collections such as the video or audio collection. The idea is to look at the quality, quantity, and condition of the collection. It can also be compared to state and national collection standards.

If you look critically you may also be able to identify bias in your selection practices. For example, if your public library music collection is full of country music but the hip hop section is clearly the most used, you may have some personal bias.

The school library media center collection can be divided into three segments: basic collection serving a variety of needs, general emphasis collections to support courses of instruction, and specific emphasis areas to support units of instruction. Consider new purchases in emphasis areas. For example, the curriculum standards might place an emphasis on a particular physical science area. Do you have audio and video materials available to address these standards?

After getting to know your collection, you can develop a plan to enhance weak areas of the collection and promote strong areas. For example, you might find that the state reading standards focus on the need for fluency in reading. You might increase the number of books-on-tape for the primary grades to support this standard.

Use the following off-site links to learn more about collection mapping. Or, read the book Collection Mapping in the LMC by David Loertscher.

Circulation Statistics

Most libraries collect statistics about center use and particularly circulation.When considering circulation statistics, it’s important to think about how items are being used.In other words, when a book is checked out it is normally read by one person. Or possibly two if a parent reads to a child. Videos are often viewed by an entire family, group, or class. A person may listen to an audio CD a dozen times before returning it.

Be careful when drawing conclusions from circulation statistics. Once an interesting statistic is identified, it's important to look at the data carefully. For example, let's say that the PBS Ken Burn's Jazz series was checked out six times in January. Wow! We better buy more "jazz" stuff. Before buying, notice that many PBS series contain multiple segments that are checked out as a set. For example, Jazz contains 10 DVDs! Maybe one or two people just renewed the DVD several times. Maybe you just need to review your loan period for video series.

When looking at circulation statistics, librarians often underestimate the importance of their non-print collections. Consider ways to incorporate data other than traditional circulation into collection use data.

Patron Survey

Before making changes in the program, you need to know your audience. What are the needs and interests of your clients? How are they evolving? What patterns can be seen in circulation statistics and requests? Consider where audio and video fit into the overall scope of your collection.

Consider a patron survey. Use the following questions to get started developing your questionnaire.

tryExplore some sample off-site survey results and articles. Do you think these surveys are effective or not? Why? What would you do differently?

| eduscapes | IUPUI Online Courses | Teacher Tap | 42explore | escrapbooking | About Us | Contact Us | ©2006 Annette Lamb & Larry Johnson