Assignment+3+-+qualitative+data

**My initial reaction when I looked through the stacks:**
Through a direct examination of the collection, it became evident to me why some of the media in the "least circulated" items was not leaving the stacks of our library. Because the topic of study is art, civilizations, and religion, many of the media items I found on the shelves were large "coffee table" type books. Although they weren't part of our reference section (I use that, maybe incorrectly, as a term for books that are not allowed to be check out of a library?), they certainly had the look of reference materials. I couldn't see too many students making the effort to lug some of these books around for projects and/or assignments. However, the fact that they weren't being circulated wouldn't warrant a weeding of them. The plates inside many of them were brilliant. One thing I have done with my students when we cover the art history portion of the Civilizations 12 course is that when finding examples of art on-line, go through a google-image search and see just how many different colours of van Gogh's "Starry Night" can be found. Which one reflects the truest portrayal of his original art? This is an impossible task to do unless you've actually seen the original (few of my students have been to New York, most of them that have wouldn't think to step foot into MoMA!). So, those non-circulated art books prove very handy when students are researching a specific artist and his or her work.

**Gaps in the collection:**
Our library assistant spent a great deal of time with me, running these reports, and found herself banging her head against the stacks while I slowly tried to take in how to compare the bibliographies with the call number system to identify certain gaps. This is something I will have to keep working on! However, my physical walk through the stacks revealed a few things to me:

1. In the religion section, our library has a very up-to-date selection of books pertaining to world religions. I was impressed not just by the scope (everything from the major world religions of Christianity, Islam, Judaism to a book on Sikhism, Buddhism, Taoism, etc) of the collection, but by how current the books were. Our library assistant told me that the past librarian (she had retired about 4 years ago) made it a point of hers to update the collection in this area. The books range in ability levels as well. Some are accessible to most high school readers, with what I would determine to be a grade 9 level language along with fantastic colour plates identifying some of the ceremonies, rituals, holy places of certain religions. Some are heavier philosophical reads. One of the most circulated items is Hitchens' "God is not Great".

2. In the art and artists section, I could not get over the quantity of books that were housed on the stacks. However, these books definitely were showing their age. At the same time, once I pulled a sample off the shelves it became obvious that the only reason perhaps to replace a few of them was due to their physical condition. The language within the books in some instances may have been gender biased, due to the age of the books (references to "he" instead of a neutral gender stance), but the actual information that students would glean from the pages was accurate and informative. These are those large-plate books I referred to in the quantitative section of this assignment. Although they were receiving limited circulation, they appear to be reference-like. I know when I have had my own classes in the library, the librarian has pulled this section from the stacks and my class has just spent two blocks of class time poring through them.

3. Finally, I asked a small section of my own students to spend some time going through the civilizations section for me and tell me what they liked, what they wouldn't bother reading and why. I garnered some very useful information from the students. These are grade 12 students in my Civilizations 12 class, ranging from my very strong to my somewhat weaker students (Civ 12 attracts a wide range of students as although it is a university recognized course, many take it just for personal interest). My weaker students, when surveyed, indicated that the items most of interest to them seemed to fall within two categories: the Middle Ages (books on knights and castles) and the 20th century (Time Life has a series on the decades of the 20th century). When I looked through the selection they indicated as they were "most likely to take out for personal interest), I found that these books held the greatest amount of pictures and were fairly current. My stronger students were more discerning, and I found they migrated more to books with richer information. For example, some of them had even checked out (in the past) "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and a couple had even watched the DVD version of Jared Diamond's book on the development of civilizations. I guess, although the findings didn't help me narrow it down to a small portion of the collection that was useful and the rest a likely candidate for weeding, what this showed me is that determining what is of value to students (and this was a very small sample from within our school) is highly dependent upon their own individual interests, reading levels, backgrounds, etc.

=**Collection Mapping Data**=

I have taken sections from the collection report that we ran at the start of this two week long process and broken it down into areas that I thought were useful for my Civilizations section of the collection evaluation.


 * 1. First, I thought it useful to look at the entire collection in terms of how "old" the books are.**


 * Collection By Year**
 * Decade || # of books ||
 * 1900 || 4 ||
 * 1910 || 5 ||
 * 1920 || 6 ||
 * 1930 || 10 ||
 * 1940 || 28 ||
 * 1950 || 85 ||
 * 1960 || 357 ||
 * 1970 || 936 ||
 * 1980 || 1639 ||
 * 1990 || 3512 ||
 * 2000 || 7648 ||
 * 2010 || 1083 ||

No year given/out of range 80

Total 15393


 * 2. Then, I thought it would be more useful to look at the age of Dewey specific sections that pertain to the areas falling within Civilizations:**

**RELIGION**
200 Religion 2003 27 0.18%

210 Philosophy and Theory of Religion 2008 1 0.01%

220 Bible 1998 15 0.10%

230 Christianity/Christian Theology 1994 13 0.09%

240 Christian Moral & Devotional Theology 2001 5 0.03%

250 Christian Orders & Local Church n/a 0 0.00%

260 Social and Ecclesiastical Theology 2003 2 0.01%

270 History of Christianity 1996 10 0.07%

280 Christian Denominations & Sects 1997 7 0.05%

290 Comparative and Other Religions 1998 96 0.64%

Religion Totals 1998 176 1.17%

**THE ARTS**
700 The Arts 1988 175 1.17%

710 Civic and Landscape Art 1995 4 0.03%

720 Architecture 1990 42 0.28%

730 Plastic Arts, Sculpture 1985 84 0.56%

740 Drawing and Decorative Arts 2003 797 5.31%

750 Painting and Paintings 1987 343 2.28%

760 Graphic Arts, Print Making 1983 22 0.15%

770 Photography and Photographs 1999 32 0.21%

780 Music 1994 28 0.19%

790 Recreational and Performing Arts 1999 345 2.30%

The Arts Totals 1996 1872 12.47%

**GEOGRAPHY/HISTORY**
Age Items % of Collection

900 Geography and History 1996 123 0.82%

910 Geography and Travel 2001 455 3.03%

920 Biography, Genealogy, Insignia 1990 476 3.17%

930 History of Ancient World 1998 112 0.75%

940 General History of Europe 1992 788 5.25%

950 General History of Asia 2000 164 1.09%

960 General History of Africa 1999 49 0.33%

970 General History of North America 1991 787 5.24%

980 General History of South America 1998 26 0.17%

990 General History of Other Areas 1984 5 0.03%

Geography and History Totals 1994 2985 19.88%


 * 2. Finally, I thought it would be helpful to see what percentage of the entire collection was devoted to those dewey numbers that lend themselves to the study of civilizations, art history, and religion as a grouping:**

Hundreds Divisions

Avg Age Items % of Collection FLR Bal. Dewey Difference

000 Generalities 1996 77 0.51% 1.50% -0.99%

100 Philosophy and Psychology 1998 196 1.31% 1.00% 0.31%

200 Religion 1998 176 1.17% 1.50% -0.33%

300 Social Sciences 1999 1059 7.05% 11.50% -4.45%

400 Language 1983 60 0.40% 2.00% -1.60%

500 Natural Sciences/Mathematics 1996 843 5.61% 8.00% -2.39%

600 Technology 1998 886 5.90% 8.00% -2.10%

700 The Arts 1996 1872 12.47% 8.00% 4.47%

800 Literature and Rhetoric 1989 970 6.46% 9.00% -2.54%

900 Geography and History 1994 2985 19.88% 10.00% 9.88%

Additional Category Listings

General Fiction 2002 4304 28.66% 16.00% 12.66%

Reference 1996 556 3.70% 15.00% -11.30%

Biography n/a 0 0.00% 7.00% -7.00%

Professional n/a 0 0.00% 1.50% -1.50%

Story Collection n/a 0 0.00% n/a n/a

Paperback n/a 0 0.00% n/a n/a

Easy n/a 0 0.00% 0.00% 0.00%

French 2001 949 6.32% n/a n/a

Oversize 1995 83 0.55% n/a n/a

Totals 1998 15016

It became evident through this analysis that although religion-based media is a very small chunk of our collection, that Social Sciences, Art, and History comprise the majority of our collection. The area within which I am working is well represented in our library, if you look solely at the quantitative data. When added to the quantitative data that I collected poring through the stacks, looking at the books, identifying gaps, and surveying my students, it is starting to become evident to me that this collection is actually in pretty good shape in terms of age and selection. However, I do need to look further into why some of these items are not being circulated, as most of my posturing about that is just through guesswork.

**Summary report of findings:**
What I found: When looking through our library's collection I tried to narrow Civilizations 12 down into 2 areas: Art and Religion. Those two sets of collections were very different in many ways: First, I would say the Religion section was slightly more up-to-date in terms of the years of publication for the books found in that area. Second, I would say the Art section was much larger (not just the actual size of those massive books themselves, but in terms of the numbers of books on the stacks).

In both sections, the books seem to have minimal circulation, especially when comparing them to our fiction section. Students seem to either not be accessing the books at all, or they are using them in a reference-style manner, reading them there in the library rather than checking them out. The books are in very good shape, especially those in the religion section because they are newer. The art books, particularly the big manuscript type books, are a bit worn around the edges, but there seems to be no need to replace them based on their physical appearance. The images and information on the inside are excellent in quality and accuracy. I would imagine replacing those types of books would cost a pretty penny, so holding onto them for another decade or so would be a good idea. How to get students to use them is something I'll be focusing on next year in Civ 12.

My recommendations would be to avoid weeding the religions section. The books there are very new and up-to-date, but seem to warrant minimal circulation. I would take two approaches to this: 1. Organize a small Religions unit that could be used by Humanities (English and/or Socials) teachers that makes use of these books. Even creating a scavenger hunt for the beginning of the year that helps students get oriented into the library - include these books in a small subset of that hunt. 2. Place these books out in a designated area in some small display with a bold title that draws the students, teachers, and other patrons to this small collection and piques their interests.

For the art section, again, I would hesitate to start weeding just because these books aren't leaving the library. My approach to this section would be more towards placing them on display (they are so incredibly attractive - read like coffee table books) so that library patrons could leaf through them at their leisure. In fact, given the poor physical condition of some of them, perhaps they could be treated more as reference books? Some of them certainly are the size of a large atlas!

**Reflection**
What was easy

and/or difficult? What would you do differently the next time?

First, what a process! That was a huge learning curve for me. Thank goodness my very good friend works as our library assistant and was willing and able to run reports for me. I would have had no idea where to even start. I found the overall collection report really interesting, the way that it identified gaps in our collection, gave the average age of the entire collection and then again through the hundreds subsets. Trying to narrow my search down to a specific curriculum area was a bit of a challenge, and I know I fell short in terms of evaluating the collection for everything that could be used in Civilizations 12, but I tried to choose the major themes of the course and work with that.

When I read chapter 12 of Bishop's text, it seemed that the main focus of that chapter was the relative advantages/disadvantages of different circulation studies, age analysis and other methods that have you run reports similar to the ones we ran for the collection I was studying. I felt the advantage gained from these reports was a narrowing down into a field of focus that would allow me then to hit the stacks and physically check out the books. I do believe these tools can't be the only determiner for what should stay or go in a library, along with what should be added. When I read what Bishop wrote about User-Opinion surveys, both informal and formal, I decided to do a small, very informal one with the collection I was studying. This was very useful in a few different ways. It allowed me some insight into what students felt was relevant to their educational experience in the library, gave me some insight into the thought process that students go through when selecting library media, and finally, I hope it highlighted to those students a section of the library that they may have not bothered to access prior to the survey. In Bishop's book, the author makes it clear that each of the processes used to evaluate a collection has its relative advantages and disadvantages. I think that in my own learning process here I found that most of those disadvantages can be eliminated just by utilizing several of the evaluation methods. If you were to use age-analysis only, you could be in danger of weeding media just based on the fact that parts of your collection seem "out-of-date". Bye bye Shakespeare! I am exaggerating of course, but just because books are old doesn't necessarily make them less valuable. However, that may be true if you are dealing with a section of your library that deals with environmental issues. Running reports is a great tool for overall statistics regarding what is in your collection, how old it is, how often it is leaving the library doors, etc. However, I wouldn't want to discount the value of actually going through the books and flipping through them for gender-bias (again, you would want to be careful in determining what warrants a removal of an item based on this), inaccurate information, and the overall physical condition of the book.

I found chapter 8 interesting, but a bit of information overload when it came to "Criteria by Format". Admittedly, I have only had time to focus on the book section of our media collection for Civilizations 12 - didn't even get to the back room to check out the DVD's, Play-Aways, or Kindles. I would agree that there are lots of what seem to be minor details to consider when adding to a collection in terms of what format to choose. My guess is, for most libraries, the choices made will often be budget-driven. Looking at Bishop's advantages/disadvantages list was exhausting, but I think once you factor in the dollar amount that would be invested into a certain media format, the decisions may be much clearer in terms of what you would put into the collection and what you would leave out.

What worked? Well, having a friend run reports for me sure worked! I don't think I'd have a clue what to do otherwise. I feel at a massive disadvantage not being in a library while taking this course. Actually, many times I wondered how my classmates are actually teacher-librarians without having this course in the first place? They must be learning on the move, to say the least! Having run the reports however, I found my head spinning just reading through numbers. I'm not particularly familiar with the Dewey system. (Yes, I can find books using it, and can reshelve, because I know my alphabet and have numerical skills :), but just getting pages and pages of titles with Dewey call numbers on it did little to help me truly evaluate the collection. I really needed to get into the stacks and pull books off the shelves to see what was in them, what condition they were in, how accurate their content was, how attractive they would be for students to access, etc. Having said that, I would have had a hard time narrowing down just how useful each book was if I hadn't run those reports. So that did work.

What didn't work? Narrowing down a section of media relevant to Civilizations 12 was almost impossible to do. The course is so ambiguous in scope, and I tend to teach to a variety of topics to pique student interest, that I was worrying about my choice for a curriculum area once we were given this assignment. However, in the end I'm glad I stuck to Civ 12 because at least I do know a small subset of media that would be useful in many of my units. Now to tackle the rest of the curriculum!

The easiest part of the process was physically getting into the stacks and hauling books off the shelves to look at them. Having said that, the hardest part was actually putting myself into a position as a judge of what was useful and what was not useful. I realize the next assignment actually requires us to weed the collection. My fingers are crossed, Joanne, that you mean a virtual weed, as I'm not sure our librarian would take kindly to me removing media from the collection!

The most difficult was wrapping my head around how vast the collection is and the reality that a librarian must go through this continually, while dealing with the entire collection, not just a small subset of that collection. Overwhelming to say the least!

If I was to do this assignment over again, I would definitely create some formal evaluation of the collection and have one of my classes go through it. I think that would have been extremely useful and given me a better idea of what students would use compared to what they see as irrelevant within the stacks.