Maintaining Professional Libraries in Schools

 

What can be done

Professional libraries in schools are of vital importance for continued professional growth. In order to promote continuing education among teachers and staff, a professional library provides access to information that may not necessarily be easily accessed outside of the academic environment. With moderate funding, a professional library is easily maintained using the same resources of collection development that are available for the students' collection. With a few easy steps to paving the way for improvement and promotion, a school's professional library may become a rich resource that is valuable to everyone.

School Libraries: Maintain a Current Professional Collection!  

 

Weeding:

• Follow your school library’s policy concerning weeding.
• Replace and repair materials as needed. Remember, few people are inclined to want to checkout or read materials that are defaced and worn, even if they have been “loved” by previous patrons.
• Be sure to withdraw materials from your automated system as well as any other system that might be in place to help your staff access the materials.

Inventory:

• A thorough inventory is a must!
• Identify items that need new barcodes or that are missing or lost.
• Determine which missing or lost items must be replaced.
• Clean shelves, dust, and tidy up the place so once you are done, staff are inclined to check out….

Wish List:

• Use resources to help you keep current of well-reviewed materials.
• Request for all to contribute ideas and accept their requests for materials.
• Generate parent giving for individual teacher requests, just as you would for book fair titles. Be creative.
• Tie in staff development resources with professional collection development if it would be conducive to building your collection.
• Know your staff’s needs.
• Be pro-active. Attending meetings by being a delegate to delegate.

Databases:

• Training should be provided for educators on how to use school databases to search for information that is relevant and applies to practical problems that occur in the classroom, with students, and with subjects taught.
• Follow-up to initial training should continue until educators are utilizing the databases on a regular basis.
• Administrators who include database journal articles in their faculty meeting discussion should notice an increase in their faculty participation of reading of said articles. School librarians may be of a great service in this area by helping adminstrators and educators in locating articles for discussion on timely subjects.

 Possible reading to add to your professional collection (2006)

Suggested Reading.doc

Interesting quote:

"These days, the term research barely evokes any kind of imagination or intrigue.  Neither does it capture our fascination nor bring to mind the excitement of discovery. In fact, after polling promising high-schoolers on what is called forth into the imagination at its mention, the idea of research was most approximated as “the acquisition of in-depth knowledge,” and some were bewildered that imagination and research could even be related.  Why?  Research has inhabited a place closed-off to the heart." Mark Daley "Ways of Being in Research" Educational Insights, 7(2). http://www.ccfi.educ.ubc.ca/publication/insights/

Know more about your school...

 Want to know the demographics for a particular school? http://nces.ed.gov/globallocator/ 

Another place to look for more journals...

 Create your own educational wiki!HelpPublic, Silver wiki Privacy Policy RSS