Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Stephanie Watkins
Dr. Edwards
LIS 5443
December 8, 2017
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
Learner teachers for the high population of Spanish speakers. The hispanic population
percent are African Am percent of the school’s population. 12 percent are caucasian
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.