CD+Policy

**Collection Development Policy Main Points**

The District shall provide a wide range of quality learning resources for students to deliver, support, enrich, and assist in implementing the District’s educational program. Learning resources shall be defined as textbooks, library acquisitions and ancillary materials for classroom use, and any other resources used for formal or informal teaching and learning purposes. Learning resources may be print or non-print and may be acquired through purchase, as gifts (if approved), or as loans (Blue Valley School District Collection Development Policy).
 * Objectives:**

The School Librarian assumes final responsibility for the selection of materials. Materials shall be chosen by the librarian alone and in cooperation with faculty, staff, and students (Harris- Uni High Library)
 * Responsibility for Selection:**

Learning resources shall be selected by the professional staff to help schools meet curricular, instructional, and assessment objectives. The selections shall also be based on long-range plans, existing collections of materials, and the availability of other resources. The following criteria shall be considered in the selection of learning resources:
 * Criteria for Selection of Learning Resources:**

__Ties to the Curriculum__ • Contribution that the resource makes to the curriculum and to the interests of the students, based on state and district standards. • Contribution the resource makes to the breadth and depth of representative viewpoints on controversial issues. • Contribution of representative viewpoints, including, but not limited to, multicultural, disability awareness, and gender-fair concepts. • Appropriateness of the resource for the age of the students with whom the resource is intended to be used considering the following: Emotional development Ability level Learning style Social development Absence of vulgar language, sexual explicitness, or violent imagery that is gratuitously employed • Appropriateness of the resource for the circumstances of use

__Quality of Resource__ • Favorable reviews found in reputable professionally prepared sources. • Favorable recommendations based on preview and/or examination of materials by District certified staff. • Reputation and significance of the author, producer, and/or publisher. • Potential user appeal. • Artistic quality and/or literary style. • Quality and variety in format, content, and production. • Overall strengths. (Blue Valley School District Collection Development Policy).

The library provides non-print materials and services for the following purposes:
 * Non-print Materials Policy:**
 * to implement, enrich, and support the curriculum of University Laboratory High School
 * to meet the individual, educational, emotional, and recreational needs of students, faculty and staff (Harris- Uni High Library)

The school’s professional library staff has primary responsibility for selecting library materials in accordance with the school’s curriculum and instructional program. The selection process may include consultation with school administrators, other teachers, students and parents, and staff of the CPS Department of Libraries and Information Services. If the school does not have a properly certified school librarian, the teacher who staffs the library should consult with professional staff in the Department of Libraries and Information Services in selecting library materials.
 * Selection Procedures:**

The following criteria shall be used in selecting school library materials: 1. Materials should support the school’s and the District’s educational goals and policies, including the advancement of student literacy. 2. Materials should be selected to support, enrich and extend the school’s curriculum and to encourage informational, educational and recreational reading, viewing and/or listening. 3. Consideration should be given to diverse user interests, abilities, backgrounds, cultures, languages, and maturity levels. Materials intended for student use should be appropriate for the subject area and for the age, social development, ability levels, special needs, and learning styles of students served by the collection. 4. Materials should represent various viewpoints on controversial issues so that students learn to explore, analyze and make intelligent judgments. 5. The value of a work should be examined as a whole and given greater weight than individual words, phrases or passages contained in the work. 6. In order to assure quality selection the following additional factors will be weighed as they apply: a) Educational significance and/or contribution to the curriculum; b) Informational or recreational interest; c) Reputation and significance of the author, producer, editor and/or publisher; d) Degree of potential user appeal; e) Contribution to the variety in viewpoints offered on controversial issues; f) Accuracy and currency of information; g) Arrangement and organization of the material (for example, indices, glossaries, tables of contents, chapter headings, etc.); h) Artistic quality, literary style or production values; i) Readability levels; j) Quality and variety of format; k) Need for duplicate copies of extensively used materials; l) Need to replace essential/required worn, damaged, or missing materials; and m) Value commensurate with cost and/or need (Chicago Public Schools Policy Manual).

**Specific Criteria Considered:** 1. The overall purpose of the material and how well it is accomplished 2. Reputation and significance of the author 3. Timeliness or permanence of the materials 4. Importance of subject matter to the collection or curriculum 5//.// Accuracy of material 6. Reputation and standards of the publisher or producer 7. Reading level and reader appeal 8. Quality of writing and illustrations 9. Price 10. Fairness of ethnic and sex-role representations (Norman Public Schools Library Media Program Procedures Manual)

The Board acknowledges the interests of parents, students, teachers, librarians, administrators and other members of the school community in the district's library resources. When a challenge is raised about materials that are maintained in a library or a request is made to include additional materials (collectively, “complaint”), the librarian needs to consider the individual’s interest in expressing a complaint, the requirements set out in this policy, and the principles of Intellectual Freedom as expressed in the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights and its interpretation for school libraries (Chicago Public Schools Policy Manual)
 * Policy on Controversial Materials:**

If the complaint cannot be resolved through an informal telephone conference or meeting between the complainant and the librarian or principal, as appropriate, the following procedure must be followed:
 * Procedure for Reconsideration of Controversial Materials (Print/Non-print):**

1. Listen calmly and objectively to the complaint. Explain briefly the selection criteria and procedures established by the district in this collection development policy. 2. Provide the complainant a copy of this policy and the complaint form, which can be found at http://www.oism.cps.k12.il.us/dept_libraries.shtml. Explain that the signed and completed form must be submitted before further action is taken. If the librarian or principal does not receive a completed and signed form within two weeks, he or she may consider the matter to be resolved. 3. Upon receipt of a signed and completed complaint, the librarian shall notify the school’s Area library coordinator in the Department of Libraries and Information Services. Within ten school days of receipt of the complaint, the Area library coordinator will form a review committee with the librarian and principal and will meet or confer about it. 4. The review committee will determine whether the material that is challenged or requested meets the criteria for selection set forth in this collection development policy. 5. The written decision of the committee will be sent to the complainant within 30 days of receipt of the complaint. 6. The complainant may challenge the committee’s decision by making a written appeal to the Director of the Department of Libraries and Information Services (Director). The Director will provide the Area Instruction Officer (AIO) of the involved school a copy of the Complaint, the committee’s decision, and the written appeal. With input from the AIO, the Director will render a final decision on the appeal. 7. Complainants may not raise the same or substantially same challenge after the appeal has been decided or matter closed. 8. Challenged material may remain in circulation until this review and appeal process is completed (Chicago Public Schools Policy Manual)

Organizations and individuals frequently express an interest in donating books and other resources to CPS libraries. Generally, professional library staff must review potential library donations using the same criteria as purchased material. Additional criteria include the following: a) Donated materials should be new or barely used (in good to excellent condition with no writing or other defacing), complete, clean, durable, and attractive; b) Reference materials, including atlases, encyclopedias, subject specific multi-volume sets, and other non-fiction resources should be no more than five years old; science, medical, computer, and other resources in areas in which information quickly becomes outdated should be no more than three years old. Book sets should be complete; c) Fiction books should be no more than eight years old with the exception of books by wellknown children’s authors and classics; d) All materials should have a reading level and an interest level of Pre-K through 12th grade; e) Non-fiction books should not reflect outdated stereotypes of racial or cultural groups in either the text or the illustrations and should avoid oversimplification of complex issues and other distortions that would give readers erroneous or misleading information; and f) Materials that generally are not appropriate for library use, such as textbooks, consumable instructional materials such as workbooks, standardized tests, most periodicals, pamphlets, and catalogs will not be accepted (Chicago Public Schools Policy Statement)
 * Criteria and Procedures for Library Donations:**

On a regular basis, the librarian will remove materials that have misleading or outdated information, that have poor appearance, that have been superceded by newer editions and recent research, that are trivial in their relationship to the school's curriculum or have not circulated for over five years. The intent of the weeding is to maintain a collection that is appealing, current and satisfies an overwhelming proportion of the students' needs (District Selection Policy- Iola-Scandinavia Middle/High School Library).
 * Weeding:**

Guidelines
 * Weeding by Appearance
 * Worn-out volumes: dirty, brittle, yellow pages; missing pages; tattered covers; etc.
 * Badly bound volumes: soft, pulpy paper and/or shoddy binding
 * Badly printed works
 * Books of antiquated appearance which might discourage use
 * Audio-visual materials with missing or broken pieces
 * Weeding of Superfluous or Duplicate Volumes
 * Unneeded duplicate titles
 * Older editions
 * Highly specialized books (when library holds more general or up-to-date volumes on the same subject)
 * Books on subjects of little interest to the local community
 * Books which no longer relate to the curriculum (if specialized)
 * Weeding Based on Poor Content
 * Information is dated
 * Information is inaccurate
 * Stereotypes are present
 * Book is poorly written
 * Weeding According to Use
 * Nonfiction: Book has not been checked out within last 10 years
 * Fiction: Book has not been checked out within last 5 years (classics excluded) (Fiction Weeding Guidelines)
 * Categories of Books which may be quickly outdated:
 * 000s: computer
 * 100s: psychology (especially popular literature)
 * 300s: college & career materials
 * 400s: grammars with dated examples and/or illustrations
 * 500s: astronomy, chemistry, physics, biology
 * 600s: electronics, engineering, health, technology
 * 900s: popular biographies
 * Mistakes in selection/acquisition
 * Categories of Books which are not quickly outdated:
 * dictionaries
 * biographical sources
 * literary criticism
 * classics of literature
 * foreign language literature
 * art books
 * local history/geography
 * books providing general principles of a subject or discipline (Harris- Uni High Library)

Blue Valley School District, Overland Park, Kansas: “Selection Policy 4600” []
 * Works Cited**

Chicago Public Schools, Chicago, Illinois: “Chicago Public Schools Policy Manual: New Collection Development Policy for School Libraries” []

District Selection Policy” Iola-Scandinavia Middle/High School Library []

Harris, Fances Jacobson. "Collection Development Policy//.**"** University Laboratory High School Library//. U of Illinois, 10 Oct. 2011. Web. 19 Nov. 2011. **[|.]**

Norman Public Schools, Norman, Oklahoma: “Norman Public Schools Library Media Program Procedures Manual” [|http://staff.norman.k12.ok.us/~klewis/Handbook/selectionpolicy.html]