COLLECTION POLICY

July 2005

POLICY: Marlborough School Library collection shall be developed to and aligned with academic and other activities of the Marborough School, including but not limited to academics, athletics, in-service and enlightenment of all students, faculty, administration and the Marlborough School community as a whole.

The word collection refers to materials such as books, maps and atlases, and their electronic versions, reference sources, periodicals, subscriptions to electronic and Web-based services, audiovisual material, as well as educational software. The Library provides a wide range of publications representing many different points of view.

Under the general principles of intellectual freedom and the Library Bill of Rights, the following basic criteria are used as a guideline in our selection:

• Literary and / or artistic excellence as well as currency and timeliness of material.
• Importance to the breadth and depth of the educational goals of the Marlborough School.
• Lasting significance to a field of knowledge.
• Relevance to students, teachers, and staff of Windward.
• Recommendation by professional members of the Marlborough School community.
• Suitability of content, formats and appearance to the intended learning community at Windward.

In addition to bibliographies such as Junior High School Catalog, Senior High School Catalog, the following sources are os special importance:

ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation and

North Central Regional Educational Laboratory

Selection tools used to regularly review prospective collections include, but are not limited to the following titles:

• Booklist
• Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
• Horn Book
• Library Journal
• New York Times Book Review 
• School Library Journal
• Wilson Library Bulletin

DEVELOPMENT: The collection will be assessed during the Fall term of 2005. Strengths and weaknesses will be identified. The collection will be weeded based on established criteria. The collection shall be strong, lean, accessed-based, and current, especially during the interim period when there is little space available in the present library space.

Based on the collection assessment findings, publications are identified in the areas of arts, social studies, sciences and computer literacy. Seminal reference works were identified, obtained, and processed or installed. Individual memos described some of these works and gave logon passwords and IDs (e.g., Encyclopedia Britannica, ProQuest, JSTOR, EbscoHost, and other collections). In addition, the following procedure will be used during the Spring term of 2006.

PROCEDURE:

• Bibliographies will be compiled, verified, and distributed to various departments (e.g., English, Science, Social Studies, the Arts, Foreign Language, Athletics, Math and others). 
• Contact persons, typically departmental chairs, will be given instructions on how to select library publications (substantial quality and timely value--this excludes acquisition of textbooks-- as well as programmatic and space considerations, funding constraints).
• Instructors, who are experts in respective areas, will prepare lists of suggested items to be purchased; and prioritized lists.
• The lists will then be submitted to the Library Director; each item will be verified, reviewed through several sources, and if approved, processed.
• Material will be acquired, cataloged and classified, and displayed/shelved.

Copyright © 2005 by Zorana Ercegovac

Last updated: August 4, 2008