Assignment 2: Collection Evaluation Report

This evaluation report is to determine whether the current collection is able to sufficiently support a Grade 9 novel study unit for an English class.  The students read the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian.  They have had discussions about the book and as a class and generated research topics that were of interest to them.  Some of the research topics included: the Indian Act, Indian Treaties, Indian Reserves, Residential Schools, Colonization, and Reconciliation.  Something I noticed as I was compiling a list of books in the collection to support this unit of study, perusing through the collection physically and online, the language used to describe Native Americans has become more politically correct as their status as a group of people has gained broader awareness and become more prominent at different levels of society.   It is interesting to see society’s changing attitudes reflected in some of the books in the collection for this unit of study.  This change is especially evident in the more recent or newly acquired additions to the collection.

 

Looking at my list of resources (28 items) to support this unit of study, my topic search results are as follows: residential schools (15 items), Reconciliation and Indian Reserves (7 items each), Indian Treaties (3 items) and Colonization (2 items) and Indian Act (1 item) came up.  I am not surprised that the collection contained a fair number of resources on the topic of residential schools as it is a recent topic of interest in the educational system as well as in Canadian society.  However, the results are small for the topic of Indian Act, Colonization and Indian Treaties and suggesting that a few more books of this topic could benefit the students doing this unit of study. 

Physically, the books are in good shape.  Some are a bit discoloured due to perhaps their age. The oldest book I have on my list is twenty-four years old; perhaps this one needs to be weeded out of the collection.  The majority of resources I have listed have been published within the last ten years, which means most of the information is fairly up to date.  There are a variety of media to support different types of learners in this unit of study as well ranging from DVDs, atlases, CDs, comic books, fiction and non-fiction books, and an illustrated series of books on the history of Canada.  There are even more resources available online via online research databases including Ebsco.  Through Ebsco, the Canadian Points of View Reference Centre can be found where there are many up-to date literature regarding current native issues.  Another useful online resource is the Gale Canada in Context database. There are also teaching kits and teacher resource guides to assist the teacher in further expanding discussion and promoting learning in this unit of study. 
 

The books and resources that I compiled came from the 300 (Social Sciences) and 900 (History and Geography) section of the collection.  In the 300 section there are a total of 434 items, of which I selected 5 items, and in the 900 section there are a total of 986 items, of those I chose 9 to include on my list.  The average age for the 300 section is 19 years old and 20 years old for the 900 section.  I wanted to avoid using outdated materials so I was careful to select the more recent titles that are a match to the topics in the unit of study.  Additionally, I selected 6 books from the General Fiction section. There is a total of 1878 items in this section and the average age is 10 years old.  The remaining 8 items on my list consist of DVDs (2), a CD (1), teaching kits (2), and teacher resources (3).

 Looking at the Titlewise report, as of October 14^th 2016, there is a total of 6639 in the Delta Secondary School Library Collection.   The average item per student is 4.9, which  is well below the recommended 20 items per student based on the school population (Asselin, Branch, Oberg, & Canadian School Library Association Staff, 2003).  I think this is probably due to the shift towards online books and resources.  The average age of an item in the collection is 17 years old.   The most popular section in the collection is the Young Adult and the Adult section, which makes sense as this is a high school and that would be the targeted group. The entire collection consists of 38% fiction with an average age of 10 years old and 62% non-fiction with an average age of 20 years old. Furthermore, the report indicates that there are 2640 items that Titlewise considers “aged” titles and 884 items that are 2011 and newer.  The numbers seem askew to me; it should be the reverse.  This library is in need of weeding, and then purchasing new items to add to the collection, those would be my biggest recommendations for improving the collection.

 

The process of conducting a collection report has been immensely informative to me about how to effectively support and collaborate with other teachers in students’ learning.   Despite the low item count for a school with a student population of 1350, the current collection along with the online resources, does a good job supporting this particular unit of study.  However, the Titlewise report revealed the overall deficiencies in the library collection, specifically the ratio of old materials to new and the need for a cull.  I suspect that the lack of a guiding document such as a library policy and procedures on selection and weeding may have contributed to the state of this collection.

 

Works Cited

 Asselin, M., Branch, J. L., Oberg, D., & Canadian School Library Association Staff (2003). Achieving information literacy: Standards for school library programs in Canada. Ottawa: Canadian School Library Association.