Collection+Management


 * Collection Management **
 * 1.4 have a specialist knowledge of information, resources, technology and library management **
 * A SLA Standards of professional excellence for teacher librarians (2004, p. 2) states that excellent teacher librarians must “understand that professionally managed and resourced school libraries are crucial to the achievements of the school community [, must] have a rich professional knowledge of national standards for library and information management [and must] have a comprehensive understanding of national standards for information retrieval”. Hay, L. (2006, p.27) there is an “increasing dependence on, and demand for, a school library facility that provides students with access to state of the art technologies, resources and services to support their learning”. To provide for this demand teacher librarians must understand the critical place of the library within the school as well as having the knowledge and skills in information management and retrieval. **


 * All cataloguing, accessioning, end processing and shelving within the site one library is done by the library aide. Copy cataloguing is done through SCIS (Schools Catalogue Information Service) database initially or through the Magpies Magazine or Wheelers Books websites if records cannot be found on SCIS. Original cataloguing is done by the library aide with assistance from the teacher librarian as needed. Records added or updated on the AIMS library system are updated overnight, and made available on the OPAC (Online Public Access Catalogue) the next morning. **


 * The evaluation of the collection is the responsibility of the teacher librarian. She makes the final decisions regarding selection, preservation, storage, replacement and de-selection of items within the collection. These decisions are based on a set of selection criteria within the 'Collection Development Policy' ****(see below for link) for the middle school library. The document while quite old, with errors in numbers and year levels of students is still used as it is quite explicit in its criteria for the inclusion of items within the collection. **




 * The teacher librarian has a substantial budget for the library and is able to regularly select books from lists (and samples) left by book sellers, by visiting bookshops as well as including titles from “The children’s book council” short list and reviewing requests from staff and students. She also regularly reviews books from and for the “Mature Readers” collection. A major review of the “Mature Readers” section was undertaken when responsibility for year eight was moved to the high school library, but books still turn up every so often that are not suitable for the middle school collection and need to be reissued to the high school library. Once a year a stocktaking of all library resources is undertaken, at which time damaged, infrequently used or outdated books will be reviewed for weeding. **


 * The site one library like many of its counterparts relies heavily on the skills of its library aide to manage the day to day running of the collection. While the teacher librarian is responsible for the selecting, invoicing and budgeting, the timeliness of getting the resources into the collection becomes the responsibility of the library aide. As long as the teacher librarian maintains her understanding of the standards required and can manage the practices of the library aide to ensue best practice is upheld we can still say that this is an example of best practice in the library. **

**In improving the management of the library the only real area which needed improvement was that of policy documentation. All policy documents were either old, non-existent, lost or a straight copy of the ASLA documents, with no school specific information. The documents that did exist were comprehensive and well written but just in need of updating. **