School Library Policy

School Library Policies 

According to the The IFLA/UNESCO School Library Guidelines:

"The components which contribute to effective successful well-managed school libraries are the following:

•  finance and budgeting
•  accommodation
•  resources
•  organisation
•  staffing
•  library use
•  promotion.

All these components are essential in a realistic policy framework and action plan. … The action plan should be made up of strategies, tasks, targets, monitoring and evaluation routines. The policy and plan should be an active document subject to regular review. (pp. 3 & 4)

The sole source of school-based policy or procedures for the school library is the Resource Centre Guide.  It’s use is supplemented by guidelines provided in the:

• Resource Management: For schools with teacher-librarians, Department of Education Queensland, (1991)
• Library Management for Small Schools (Parts 1, 2 and 3), Department of Education Queensland, (1984)
• Handbook of School Library Practice, Brisbane College of Advanced Education, (1985).

It was envisage that the school's policy documents would be reviewed after the move to the new library, and revised to bring them inline with ASLA Standards (2.3.1). To date, the policy documents have not been updated. During the development of the new policies it will be important to ensure, through consultation, that:

1. Library operations meet the needs of the school community.
2. Staff are aware of the library 's priorities, policies and procedures.

The policy section of the School Libraries Association of Queensland website provides advice for teachers about writing policies and links to Education Queensland's related policies on the Libr@ry Services website, http://education.qld.gov.au/library/services/ .

Issues arising

Due to the lack of clear policy and procedures about the accessioning of resources, and a high turnover in the positions of head of curriculum and deputy principal a number of issues have arisen. These issues quickly became evident when I began working as a part-time TL in February 2011.

I found it difficult to provide advice to new staff members about the resources available in the school. This partly due to the fact that many of the resources are not recorded in the Alice database.  It is also partly because teachers borrowed resources and kept them all year.

When I began a stocktake later in the year, I found that resources were scattered throughout the school in a range of locations, and that few staff members were aware of their existence. One 'location', ECC, no longer existed and the resources had been distributed to other locations. The 'learning suppor't location and the 'HOC' location contained a mixture of accessioned resources and non-accessioned resources. The resources in these rooms were borrowed by teachers without being officially borrowed through the library system. In addition, some 'resource boxes' had been disbandoned and the resources reallocated to homework reading or guided reading without notifying the library. So the 'resource boxes' still existed in the Alice database.

 I raised my concerns with the  library aide, other TL, the business systems manager, the acting head of curriculum and the acting deputy principal. The library aide and I listed actions arising from the stocktake and a proposal for improving accountability for resources purchased by the school and increasing staff awareness of and access to resources. We suggested that additional aide time to devoted to updating our records and accessioning the outstanding resources and setting up borrowing processes for two resource rooms. We argued that if this process was used to train an additional library aide, it would help us prepare for the existing aide's retirement at the end of 2012.  

Plans for the future

At the end of this year, staff will be consulted about the introduction of new processes for sorting and circulating curriculum resources and reading materials. The purposes of the new processes is to improve accountability for resources purchased by the school and to increase staff awareness of and access to resources. In future most resources will be accessioned through the library so that there is a record of their existence in the school in the Alice database.

The rationale for not doing this in the past was that there wasn't enough space in the Centenary library to accommodate all these resources. The architects envisaged the new library as a 'bookless' library with improved ICT capabilities. However, given staff reluctance to embrace technologies this has not a realistic short-term vision.

Library staff sought a solution that accommodated the resources in a way that raised staff awareness of the resources and made them more accessible. The lower school already has a reading resource room in a central location to Prep to Year 3 classrooms. It currently contains language kits, big books, homework reading materials, guided reading materials, and lower school maths resources.The second resource room adjoins the staffroom. It will contain All resources (except homework readers) will be barcoded. Both rooms will have computers and scanners for circulation.

Options for managing these rooms will be presented to staff and decisions about processes for maintaining circulation of resources will be made in consultation with staff. These will include consideration of:

• duration of staff loans for particular categories such as guided reading materials
• storage and organisation of resources within the room
• resource selection
• accession procedures
• circulation procedures
• 're-shelving' returned resources and maintaining the room.

Challenged books
Another issue that arose this year, was that of 'challenged books'. Two examples are the Cherub series by Robert Muchamore and the Trickster series by Tamora Pierce. Some parents questioned the appropriateness of these books for primary school readers because they deal with adult themes such as teenage sex, teenage pregnancy, pregnancy terminations, same-sex relationships, drugs and violence. The issues were raised with classroom teachers or the principal and referred to the library for action. In the case of the Robert Muchamore series, the principal insisted that the entire series be withdrawn from the collection until the books could be reviewed. I discovered that there is no consistent procedure in place for dealing with 'challenged books' or for reviewing resources. Some students have suggested that the library introduce a Year 7 collection for such books. Such policies should be developed in consutlation with staff and parents. As a starting point for developing a school policy and procedures, I used the materials available on the Library Services website, Learning Resource Selection Guidelines for Schools
 to draft the following documents as artefacts to stimulate discussion:

• DRAFT Collection Development Policy
• Challenged Resources (letter to initiator of challenge)
• Request for Review of Resources (form)
  

  References

Green, B. (1984). Library Management for Small Schools: Part 1 Organisation. Queensland Department of Education: Brisbane.

Green, B. (1984). Library Management for Small Schools: Part 2 Processes and Procedures. Queensland Department of Education: Brisbane.

Green, B. (1984). Library Management for Small Schools: Part 3 Promotion. Queensland Department of Education: Brisbane.

International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). (2002). The IFLA/UNESCO School Library Guidelines. IFLANET: Retrieved October 5, 2008, from http://www.ifla.org/VII/s11/pubs/sguide02.pdf

Learning Resources Unit, Studies Directorate, Education Queensland. (1991). Resource Management: For schools with teacher-librarians, Department of Education. Queensland: Brisbane.

Mallan, K. (1985). Handbook of School Library Practice. Brisbane College of Advanced Education. Kelvin Grove Campus: Brisbane (unpublished).

Nundah State School, (undated). Nundah State School Resource Centre Guide. (unpublished).