Reflecting on Lesson 12 - Managing a Collection

The Role of the TL in Managing a Reference Collection

This week’s lesson made me think about all of the actions that the TL must take to manage a reference collection.

A large role of the TL should be selecting resources.  In order to create a usable collection which meets the students needs a TL should spend a lot of time evaluating possible additions to the collection as well as whether current resources are still useful.  While a TL should spend a lot their time selecting and weeding reference materials, I think this task could and should be done cooperatively with other staff (teachers, support staff, administrators).  This would ensure that the TL does not have to spend too much of their time conducting one of their many roles.  It would also ensure that a variety of opinions are heard from in the evaluation process.  As a result, the best resources should be selected and added to (or removed from) the collection.

The TL also needs to do a good job developing programs for students to work in the library.  These programs should be easy to apply and incorporate into the curriculums of all classes while at the same time promoting information literacy skills.  These programs need to originate from the TL and the library program.  However, they should incorporate the ideas of other staff in the building.

While there are many other roles of the TL, I believe managing the collection and creating programs and activities to promote reading and information literacy skills are by are the most important.

Determining Budgets

Budget is another area of this week’s lesson which is a hot topic.  In my limited library experience I have realized that the budgets for library programs are determined by provincial governments, school boards and administrators.  At my school, the principal has the largest say in what the budget of our library will be.  Currently, the library budget is twenty percent of the School’s Learning Resources Budget.  This translates into approximately $12,400 per year.  This figure seems to be comparable to the average secondary library budget of $12,160 stated within the lesson.  Our TL primarily spends this money on adding fiction titles to our collection as well as maintaining and developing the databases (mainly online) to which we have access.

In Conclusion:

As stated in the lesson, the amount of funding that libraries currently receive makes the evaluation and selection process much more important is libraries can’t afford to screw up.  Therefore, not only must the TL conduct all of their roles in a timely fashion and do so with a great deal of passion for promoting information literacy skills, but they must also do so under a tight budget.  It is seemingly apparent that TL’s have a difficult job to perform with little assistance from outside sources (staff, admin, etc.).  This needs to change.