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Stephanie Watkins

Dr. Edwards

LIS 5443

December 8, 2017

The Reality of Collection Development

Introduction: The elementary school library I chose to visit is Cooper Elementary and it

is in the Tulsa Public Schools district. This library is located at 1808 South 123 East

Avenue Tulsa, OK 74128. This school is a prekindergarten through sixth grade school.

The school has approximately 736 students. This east side school has a very high

demographic of English Language Learners. They employ three English Language

Learner teachers for the high population of Spanish speakers. The hispanic population

is approximately 52 percent of the school’s population. 12 percent are caucasian and 19

percent are African Am percent of the school’s population. 12 percent are caucasian

and 19 percent are African Americans.


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Their latest A-F report card rated them an F school. Their scores have consistently
stayed below 46 percent in reading over the last last 5 years with their current principal.

The setting of the library has closed in glass doors. The library has a tree house theme

and there are wooden tree displays on the wall. There are a few orange walls that are

very inviting. There is a tree house classroom where the librarian can conduct lessons.

There is also an arena area where the librarian can do read alouds. She created a

computer and makerspace area in her library as well. She also has a mobile

chromebook and Ipad area for students to work in. There are mobile chairs and tables

in this area. She has seating that allows students move around on. They are called Hoki

stools. The sections in the library create different learning spaces.

The selection is handled by the librarian and she decides what the needs of the school

are. She does send emails to teachers and curriculum specialists to get their input on

book selections before she makes purchases. She also allows the students to provide

wish lists when she is ordering books. The sections in her library include biography,

nonfiction, fiction, everybody, graphic novel, series, and reference. Her collection

includes approximately 20,000 books.


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Acquisitions: The librarian discussed how she uses her budget and from what vendors

she prefers to use to purchase certain items. She discussed using Permabound, Follett,

and Demco. This librarian likes to use Permabound because she said the service is

great and they will replace any book that breaks. She has to create a quote for each

vendor and then turn it into the principal’s secretary for a purchase order number. She

said she has a lot of freedom in ordering what she thinks the needs of the school are.

She said she specifically looks at demographics and culture when determining which

books would fit the needs of her students. She does not have to jump through many

hoops or watch for red tape because no one really monitors her spending. There are not

many purchases she has to get approval on before purchasing. She does have to get

approval from her lead librarian on allocating money from her book fund to purchase

furniture or technology. It takes about 3 weeks to get in books ordered. She said it takes

a few months to get technology in and for furniture as well. She said she does not

catalog the purchases she makes for the makerspace, but will catalog books and items

that will be checked out. She has not catalogued technology yet because it is not

required. She uses a google doc for technology check out. When she receives the

books or technology she will take about a week to check that it is all correct and ready

to be on the shelf for check out to avoid any mishaps. She showed me the procedure for

entering the books with MARC records and I found that to be very helpful because I

always assumed you entered each book individually in the catalog. She said that Tulsa

Public Schools is big and that it is very hard to get everyone on the same page for

policies. When she orders books to develop the collection, she will run statistic reports

on Destiny. She looks at what is outdated and will weed books that have not been
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checked out in the past year. She said that the uniqueness of her budget comes from

her extra book fair money. She said one year she had over $15,000 in scholastic book

fair money. She could order whatever she wanted since it came from her fundraiser.

She was able to acquire books for teachers and their classrooms. She is also able to

buy perishable items for the makerspace projects and for her centers. One important

statement she mentioned was that she has to check all the books to make sure they

have all came in before they are allowed to submit the purchase order and pay the

vendors, which she says is very time consuming.

Her library collection includes Ipads, Chromebooks, laptops, cameras, audio books,

books, magazines, OSMOs, reference materials, and book sets. She said she is able to

purchase a lot of technology because she is a Title 1 school and a big portion of that

goes to technology. She does include makerspace items in the collection, but she has

not allowed these non-traditional formats to be available for check out yet. She allows

the students to come down freely to use the materials, but has not found a way to allow

them for check out to students. She has considered allowing teachers to checkout the

non-traditional materials for a specific amount of time. She does not allow teachers to

check out her Ipads because they were purchased with her own bond money, but she

does circulate the Chromebooks. The school also has a big budget for technology for

classrooms so she has not ran into any problems with teachers needing extra

Chromebooks or laptops for their classrooms. I asked her if there was a team she

consults with for acquisitions, but she said that everyone is so busy and there has not

been a committee set up for that yet. She thought it was a great idea to include one for

her library next year when making purchases! She thinks the most challenging part of
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the purchasing process is making sure not to duplicate any books when ordering. Her

collection is so large that it is very hard to be sure she is not replicating. She said her

goal this year is to weed a lot of the nonfiction because it was very dated when she took

over the library, and she thinks that will help take some of the complications way when

ordering resources and books. She also mentioned that requesting purchasing orders

and having to go back and forth to confirm purchases to keep up with her budget is

complicated as well. She said she has to be very organized and keep up with all of her

spending to make sure she gets what she needs for that school year. Another

complication she complained of was that there are so many librarians in the district that

it is hard to get together to talk about what types of materials and resources would be

valuable to the students. She has made a few purchases where she wishes she would

have consulted another librarian before ordering because it ended up being unused.

She had already mentioned MARC records being the easiest way to add books to the

catalog, but she said they will come in an email or you can locate them on the vendor’s

website. The librarian was unfamiliar with my question of cataloging in-house or

purchased. She said she just requests MARC records anytime she makes purchases

and when someone donates books, then she will add the books individually and look up

the book’s information individually. She said the best advice for someone new to

collection development is to never be afraid to ask questions! She said that asking for

requests from teachers and staff will help give the staff ownership of what is in the

library and they will be more likely to check out books and that will increase circulation

numbers.
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Budget: The librarian is given a budget at the beginning of the school year. The bond

for Tulsa Public School has allocations for perishable supplies, such as tape, and for

books. The book bond can also be broken down into furniture or technology. The books

and supplies ordered under the allocated book bond have to last 7 years according the

the bond’s rules and regulations. They are not supposed to order anything that will be

used only once. For example, she cannot buy kaleidoscopes for the makerspace from

Scholastic. There is a different budget she uses for that. She can use her student

activity fund that is funded by the bookfair and by students paying for lost books. She

has to use approved vendors only.

Reflection: We discussed that I have learned how to look specifically at the data. We

talked about the different reports that I can run to be more intentional about purchases.

We also discussed the importance of weeding books and deciding what books are no

longer valuable to the patrons. I really enjoyed being able to use what I knew from our

class in the discussion with this librarian from Cooper. She was able to gain new ideas

from me as well! She enjoyed the spark and enthusiasm I had as we discussed

collection development and the importance of being intentional to deliver resources that

support the growth of mankind (Gorman, 1998, 21). We also selected a shelf together

that could be more useful to patrons. I told her what I had learned about making

resources more accessible and strategies to do that. We talked about our assignment

“Shelf Selfie”. I let her know what shelf I selected and how I made it more valuable to

teachers and for them to locate books easier and faster. We talked about the

importance of making the books accessible and for the books to be used ( 21). The

shelf I selected for that assignment reflected that philosophy because the books were
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very quality, but they were not displayed in a way that would be used by patrons. I

gained so much knowledge from this course and from visiting the various libraries that I

can implement in my own library!


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References

Gorman, Michael. "The Five Laws of Library Science, Then & Now.(excerpt from
'Our Singular Strengths: Meditations for Librarians')." School Library Journal 44,
no. 7 (1998): 20-23.

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