One of my favorite duties in my position as a school librarian is the ordering of materials. I enjoy poring over the periodicals containing the new releases of books and non-print materials for children. I literally get an adrenalin rush when I discover new items that I know my patrons will love or that will fit perfectly into the Lower School curriculum. It takes me countless hours to read the reviews of potential new titles, but I relish every minute of it. I like being on the “cutting edge” of new releases and look forward to introducing them to my students “hot off the press,” as it were. When I have completed a large order that is ready to go, I get a great sense of satisfaction from clicking the “submit” button. And the best part of all? When the boxes arrive! It’s like Christmas. I get to open packages containing my favorite things--brand new books. I look forward to the moment when I tell my students that new books have arrived; they always cheer with excitement.
My Materials Order assignment in the Collection Development class in the fall of 2012 was a very worthwhile exercise for me as a practicing librarian. What a pleasure it was to apply the work I was doing for my SLM course immediately to my job! I had already placed one huge book order early that September, so this project forced me to dig a bit deeper to find new materials to include on my next order. I used School Library Journal, Booklist, Wilson’s Children’s Core Collection and The Horn Book as my top selection sources. I found books that fit directly into the curriculum, such as Who is Jane Goodall? for a fourth grade biography unit on notable American women and Helen’s Big World for the second grade’s study of Helen Keller. Having to come up with 65 new titles resulted in works that I had previously overlooked. When I reviewed my classmates’ completed orders, I found they had selected many books that I already have on my shelves, so it was great to see that I had made choices that my fellow graduate students considered high-quality books.
The most difficult part of this assignment was the written layout. It took an inordinate amount of time typing up each entry with all the details in the proper format. I had to be consistent in my presentation of the required information, including columns, italics and abbreviations. It just about drove me crazy, but the resulting document is a beautiful one. Luckily, I do not have to do this every time I find new items that I want to include in my collection. When I was forced to balance out the order with various Dewey Decimal categories, foreign language materials and non-print selections, I found that my choices were much more diverse than they might have been otherwise. Since Roland Park Country School is a school for girls, I was conscious about including books that would appeal to girls of various ethnicities, economic groups and non-traditional families.
One of the most valuable things I learned from the Collection Development class was to be cautious about bias in selecting materials. One way to avoid bias is to follow the selection criteria I developed. I had never realized that I had been leaning toward materials that appealed to me, primarily fiction. I have to be careful to balance out my collection with a variety of diverse materials. This course taught me how to make diverse acquisitions that are of the utmost excellence.
My Materials Order assignment in the Collection Development class in the fall of 2012 was a very worthwhile exercise for me as a practicing librarian. What a pleasure it was to apply the work I was doing for my SLM course immediately to my job! I had already placed one huge book order early that September, so this project forced me to dig a bit deeper to find new materials to include on my next order. I used School Library Journal, Booklist, Wilson’s Children’s Core Collection and The Horn Book as my top selection sources. I found books that fit directly into the curriculum, such as Who is Jane Goodall? for a fourth grade biography unit on notable American women and Helen’s Big World for the second grade’s study of Helen Keller. Having to come up with 65 new titles resulted in works that I had previously overlooked. When I reviewed my classmates’ completed orders, I found they had selected many books that I already have on my shelves, so it was great to see that I had made choices that my fellow graduate students considered high-quality books.
The most difficult part of this assignment was the written layout. It took an inordinate amount of time typing up each entry with all the details in the proper format. I had to be consistent in my presentation of the required information, including columns, italics and abbreviations. It just about drove me crazy, but the resulting document is a beautiful one. Luckily, I do not have to do this every time I find new items that I want to include in my collection. When I was forced to balance out the order with various Dewey Decimal categories, foreign language materials and non-print selections, I found that my choices were much more diverse than they might have been otherwise. Since Roland Park Country School is a school for girls, I was conscious about including books that would appeal to girls of various ethnicities, economic groups and non-traditional families.
One of the most valuable things I learned from the Collection Development class was to be cautious about bias in selecting materials. One way to avoid bias is to follow the selection criteria I developed. I had never realized that I had been leaning toward materials that appealed to me, primarily fiction. I have to be careful to balance out my collection with a variety of diverse materials. This course taught me how to make diverse acquisitions that are of the utmost excellence.