Friday, June 19, 2009
Thing #15
I have felt for a long time that it was a mistake to buy books for the library just so that we could say we have books in that area of Dewey (our religion section hasn't been touched in years), and encyclopedias, almanacs, etc. have been a waste of money for a long while. A lot of nonfiction just sits there and becomes outdated, without enough use to justify what it cost. We do need certain books for teacher support in the classroom, and to be one of the sources for kids' research (they are always required to have three sources, one of which is a book), but what our elementary kids check out from nonfiction to actually read and use are World Records, Mummies, Paranormal, Spies, Zoo Animals, Horses, Pets, Sports, Cars, Reptiles, Insects, Dinosaurs, I-Spy, Origami, Drawing, Pirates, Titanic, Jokes, Weapons and Knights. The rest is just stuff their teachers make them read. I don't know where it was written that elementary school libraries had to be exact duplicates of public libraries, or have to include all the Dewey classifications, but lots of money has been wasted working under that premise.
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Do you have any ideas about how we could count all of our online resources? When doing inventory this summer I realize that our reports are still slanted toward print media. The important number is still books per students. I believe that our libraries will eventually have to reduce our print collections, but I would like some specific guidelines. When patrons enter the library, they immediately notice how many books are on the shelves, but they often do not know about the wealth of information that we have online.
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