Since I don’t manage my own library budget, I’m in a rather interesting situation with regards to buying new books and replacing stock. I started advocating for some new book stock in about March. I had made a list of reasons based on student feedback and my own observations about our collection:
- Students were consistently requesting more non-fiction titles, particularly boys but also some girls.
- Our selection of higher level books (within the AR collection) was very, very sparse. Considering some Year 7s were already reading at level 6.0 and higher, and they still had two years to go on the scheme, there was a real need to increase choice in that area or else these students would literally run out of things to read.
- Keeping the collection current: I wanted to get new, recently published books in series or from popular authors.
So I presented these reasons to management and was told to go for it. Once I knew I had some money to spend, I also started specifically asking students for recommendations, especially the reluctant readers. This turned out to be great move because by asking reluctant readers what they want, the library will then better reflect their interests (and so hopefully they’ll be more interested in reading) and it will give them a sense of ownership in the library since books they’ve suggested will be on the shelves. If only the turn around was quicker!!! So I’ve been putting together and submitting various book orders and they’ve all started arriving in the past few weeks. I enjoyed to a large degree pointing to the library store cupboard and saying to students ‘there are loads of new books in there so next year will be awesome…’ I also spent time before term finished adding shelves into the bookcases to make more room for all these shiny new books. Now I’ve just got to catalogue them all!
Postscript: we are going to be starting some reading intervention with Key Stage 4 (Year 10-11) next year. This is aimed at students whose reading ages are two years or more below their chronological age. I’ve raised the issue that we’ll need to get some more books in for them as well, particularly high interest/low ability and non-fiction books. So the ordering continues…
notes and marks 