Re: GEN: Currency of school library collections?

[MarjorieP@AOL.COM]

     In response to:

>A committee of the Massachusetts School Library Media Association (MSLMA)
is currently revising our state standards.
We would like to include info on how current a good school library
collection should be.
We cannot find any information on how to determine this quantitatively.
For example what percentage of the collection should have copyrights less
than 5 years old, etc.?<

     I would be very interested in the responses you might get from this
question.  I teach collection development and I do not know of a standard
that addesses this issue.  I see a problem with a purely quantitative formula
however.  If a collection correlates with the school's curriculum there could
be a significant variance between the needs of one school versus another that
might influence the age requirements of a collection.  Although currency is
an important criteria for collection maintenance, it is not the only one.
 Also, I find myself wondering about the growing influence of access to
information electronically.  Schools that have access to information from the
Internet or commercial online services might look at the issue of currency
differently than those who do not have this access.

        >Information Power talks about number of volumes, and budget
formulations,
but does not contain any type of info on currency requirements.<

     It is important to remember that Information Power is a qualitative
(descriptive) guideline not a quantitative standard.  The information
included in appendices was taken from the U.S. Dept. of Education's survey
data, 1985-86, and was included to respond to the voices wanting quantitative
information.  However, most guideline documents today are descriptive,
recognizing that quantitative standards are difficult to write that have
universal application.

Marjorie Pappas
Wright State University
Dayton, OH
Email:  MarjorieP@aol.com